"Gambling and crypto" reminds me of when I was in DARE and they would refer to "drugs, alcohol, and tobacco," and I thought "aren't those all drugs?"
this post was submitted on 19 Feb 2026
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I'm old enough to remember when games were being demonized. Don't sound too bad now, eh?
Can someone explain to me how cryptocurrencies are even in this fight in the first place ? How are they grabbing and holding people's attention ? Are they staring at the graphs all day !?
Gambling with make believe money and lots of economy and trading "experts" telling you where to "invest" in
Yes, trading is addictive
*gambling
Kind of... it can be far more structured and methodical than typical gambling
I thought GCP is Google Cloud Platform but turns out it's Gambling Crypto Porn.
Bollocks. I call this bullshit.
That's because most games suck.
The thing they are tracking is primarily money. If people are playing games they already own and spending money on crypto chasing a big win, that speaks more to increased economic desperation than loss of interest in video games.
Thank you. I was wondering the same thing. The conclusion that attention must be on porn/gambling/crypto is such a wild jump.
correlation != causation
PREACH!
No. We lost interest in corporate fuck heads with no ties to gaming, using any imaginable way possible to milk, manipulate and fuck their customers over. We still love games.
milk, manipulate and fuck
That definitely sounds like porn /s
just spent 45 on 3 new indie games. gonna play the shit out of them. also playing cash cleaner simulator and loving every minute of it.
anytime I see any AAAAAA slop on steam from companies like ea, ubisoft, activision etc...i click their game, then click ignore so I never see it on my lists again.
Those three companies are dead to me, even if they hold some IP I used to hold dear.
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Not playing games, or not playing the current live service shovelware they keep pushing out?
Lots of people are realizing there were more quality games released between 1985 and 2015 than you could ever play in a lifetime. We don't need new shit if it's just gonna suck.
There's plenty of great new stuff too, often times even modern iterations of the retro stuff we loved, but it doesn't get the same level of marketing, so it's harder to find.
I am dedicating a week off just to play Slay the Spire 2 early access.
You're right, of course. Indie devs with passion are still putting out some great stuff.
My ire was much more for the AAA studios, which seem to have tossed out all the talent and vision that brought them to the top.
I mean, I was Ride or Die with Square Enix for decades, when they were different companies. After 16, I think I'm just done with new Final Fantasy games altogether. Fuck you guys, imma go play 6, 8, and 9.
I don’t play AAA games anymore (haven’t in years) but I still feel somewhat sympathetic to their plight. What has happened to them is the same thing that happened in the music industry and the film industry and a long time ago in the book publishing industry.
The marketplace is too crowded with quality stuff and so it’s extremely difficult to compete with what’s already out there. The only real answer is to take massive risks and hope you can hit a home run. Unfortunately, AAA studios just like big movie studios aren’t set up to take risks anymore. They’re set up to spend a huge amount of money on a project that’s supposed to be guaranteed to succeed. Indies can survive more easily in this space because they’re small so they can take more risks.
It’s like the dinosaurs after the asteroid impact. The big ones are dying off and the tiny ones are surviving and will eventually become birds. Or something I dunno!
YES! 6 ftw
Anytime I see FF6 mentioned, I have to refer that person to view Ethra. I'm super stoked to play this game. it's the sprite style game I've wanted for a while. octopath was fun but I dunno..this game looks amazing.
Hey buddy, those live service shovelware games are manufactured by Shovel-Spyware-Freemium Holdings Inc. They are returning valuable profits back to their shareholders!
And isn't that what video games are really about anyway? Think of the shareholders.
I mean, they are trying to turn video games into porn, crypto and gambling.
I mean, isn't this what Gacha games basically are?
They got the gambling part down pat.
They have been trying to get crypto in with little success.
And while porn games do exist, very few of them are both good at being porn AND being a game (modding in porn to good games not withstanding). Which sucks, because this is the only one of the three that would actually be cool.
God of War did a pretty good job of mixing porn with a solid game.
Shareholders: “so you’re telling me that people want a gambling, porn, crypto game?”
Yeah this is probably the angle of the report. Bet it’s paid for by a firm that owns a lot of stocks in game companies. They want to push the game companies they own into that direction so they can squeeze more “value” out of their portfolio. And now they have the “evidence”.
Remember many of these industry report are paid for by someone with an agenda. They are not independent science.
Lightning in a bottle, I had a blast
The lightning in the bottle dlc will cost 200 donnycoins and the luck to pull it is 0.0001%.
Already exists. Gacha H-games (which may accept crypto payment, not sure) happen to be extremely expensive to play, too.
Sounds like fud, from all angles. No one but Tech Bros and their bots care about crypto, porn has always been porn. There are literally thousands of great, dirt cheap games to play.
But anecdotally, I observed YouTube suck away a lot of attention from games and TV in my family. It’s lower brainpower, so if one is (say) dog tired from work, the algorithm has a lot of appeal vs a hardcore KCD2 session or an intense TV drama.
Discoverability is certainly an issue too. If game advertising boils down to “The TikTok algorithm and YouTube influencers,” then of course the predatory casino games are going to win that war.
This is shareholder bait.
So they're losing non-gamers who like EA sports?
This article should be Exhibit A in any class on "correlation does not imply causation."
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Gambling was made more accessible in the US because of a SCOTUS case in 2018. Starting later that year, Delaware became the 2nd state to allow sports betting (after Nevada). The list of states allowing access to online sports betting keeps growing, with Missouri the latest to join less than 3 months ago. 39 states now have gambling in some form, with 7 more considering legislation in the next year or two.
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Gaming revenue took off in 2020-2021 because more people were spending all day at home. It has since flattened, or slightly declined as a) pandemic-era games that were written and designed in those tough circumstances turned out poorly. b) gaming company execs thought the gravy train would never end, so set projections too high. c) acquisitions and mergers due to a combination of a) and b) meant massive layoffs and low-effort slop. d) VCs bought up the shells of former successes and accelerated c). Oh look:
A new report by Epyllion, a gaming industry advisory company headed by venture capitalist and market guru
These two things have nothing to do with one another, besides coincidentally happening at roughly the same time.
For a the past few years, I had wondered why videogames, movies, and TV shows nowadays feel so... Bland. Meaningless. Soulless. Corporate. Like, I know they ARE corporate, but these industries have all been dominated by gigantic corporations for my entire life. What changed recently? Am I just getting old and curmudgeonly and preferring content that was made back when I was younger?
Then I was watching DoorMonster talk about some show (I could be wrong, but I think it was the video about how Arcane had a great Season 1 that was largely ruined by Season 2) where they kept joking about not accusing them of using AI to write things.
Then it clicked. The Writer's Strike from May-September 2023. On paper, the Writer's Guild secured restrictions on the use of AI. And I can't point to anything specific and say "that was clearly written by AI". But I can say that for the past few years everything put out by pretty much every company has felt very... "Meh". Nothing new has grabbed me and said "wow I need to watch/play that". Could be a coincidence, but I also have to wonder whether AI tools involved in writing and visuals have cost us something intangible that I can still feel.
I see it as eating a sandwich mades by a loved one, vs one you find at a gas station made by some machine with fillers and packed with sugars.
one is made with love, and you can sense it. mustard in a smile on the bread, meats and crunchy lettuce layered properly.
the other is because you essentially have no choice, you know it takes like crap, is stupidly overpriced and could potentially make you sick but you need it to keep driving to get home from the work trip to see your loved one who makes the best sandwiches ever.
That's being mean to gas station sandwiches, but otherwise I agree
To continue the sandwich analogy, it's also, like...
You eat the sandwich made by your loved one, and not only is it everything you asked for, but they also threw in some good salami and a dash of balsamic vinegar that you never thought to even ask for in the first place, because they know your tastes and thought you'd like it. You now have a new favorite sandwich.
Versus the gas station sandwich, which is fine, but only just meets the bare minimum qualifications to be a sandwich. They used to load it up with cheap cuts of meat, which at least made it good value for the price, but lately they put in maybe a single slice of ham or two, a single sad piece of rubbery cheese, and condiments are all sold extra. And the price of the sandwich itself, smaller and cheaper than ever, has only gone up.
For Hollywood, I think it's more about the financialization. Investors don't want to do risky productions, so we only get the decade old "IP"s rehashed for the thousandth time, rather than independent art experiments.
Crypto? Really? What data have they been looking at? I would say different people engage with these mediums for completely different reasons. Gaming being the more casual activity while crypto is for addicts.
The data that they have been looking at is in the original report, linked in the article, to some great detail.
They're not losing mine.
Well... It's kinda like this.
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People love to waste money thinking they will make a profit. - Gambling.
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People love pussy. And girls turn 18 every day so there is never a shortage. From Christy Canyon to Reilly Reid to Sweetie Fox- Porn
2a. Just to be inclusive, people like dicks too. Johnny Sins is never out of work.
(Being super inclusive here, Reilly Reid and Johnny Sins don't discriminate. They both have fucked the whole goddamned rainbow.)
- People REALLY love to waste money thinking they will make a profit. - Crypto
Meanwhile,
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AAA studios are doubling down on micro transactions, "performative" social justice, AI slop, and live service slop. - AC Shadows
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Expedition 33 and Silk Song are the exceptions to the rule as far as how the AA performs financially. - No One Wants to Die
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Private Equity and MBA majors have too much influence on the game space. - Embracer Group
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Gamers just grow up. Some things you just grow out of. - Inflation, fascism, life, etc.
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And most modern games just cost too damned much! - GTA 6 projections.
AAA studios are doubling down on micro transactions, “performative” social justice, AI slop, and live service slop. - AC Shadows
I think that one factor driving either microtransactions, freemium, free-to-play stuff that does data-mining, or "incomplete" games with expansions is resistance to a higher initial price. I mean, if a studio isn't making their return on the initial price, they're going to look for alternate routes. AAA games cost more than ever to make these days. If people say
and I've seen plenty of people on here do so
"I absolutely will not buy a game with an up-front price of more than $N"....but then they're okay playing freemium stuff or games with microtransactions, I mean...that's what game studios are going to do.
I'm generally okay with an expansion model, because I like the idea of giving the studio the option to expand really popular games, and it de-risks things for both the player (you just buy the base game and get expansions if you want) and the publisher (you don't put down a ton of money to create massive amounts of stuff for a flop). Plus, some of my favorite games (including indie and open-source games, like Caves of Qud) have very long development cycles, and selling expansions is one way for larger developers to do a long development cycle...though honestly, I do agree that I miss the "just pay and get a complete game" approach, for a lot of games.
Yeah, it's got NOTHING to do with the cost of GPU's in the last 6 years...
Nothing at all...
Gambling/crypto is all risk, porn is risk-free reward
If people have more alluring alternatives for cheap dopamine, maybe video games can prioritize satisfying gameplay and narratives. Play has value, that'd be ok
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