The microtransaction debate has been raging within the gaming industry for years now, and it’s not just players who question the necessity of the extra purchases. In a recent survey among developers at Devcom 2024 in Cologne, nearly 90% of those asked said that premium games don’t need microtransactions.
According to the 100 developers asked out of the 300 speakers at the event, 89% said that they believe that premium AAA games can be “financially successful just by being Buy-to-Play.” Sticking with business models, 65% of people believe in a premium game’s model for both physical and digital games. Only one person believed that free-to-play with ads was the best direction of the industry.
In other areas of the survey, 31% of developers prefer little AI usage in game development. That said, 21% did have interest in using AI to help with coding and general production to increase the development speed of the games. Finally, in regards to AI, the belief among those polled was that AI could replace human localizations and translations within the next 12-24 months.
Moving on to challenges facing the industry as a whole, 55% believe it’s caused by market saturation while another 46% point towards the rising development costs of games. Regarding layoffs, 57% said that layoffs will continue either at the same pace or a higher pace over the next 12 months. On the opposite side of things, 43% said that layoffs will decrease within the same time frame.
Devcom is currently taking place in Cologne, Germany alongside Gamescom 2024. Insider Gaming will be at Gamescom all week long, bringing you the latest from the annual event.
What do you think of the results of the annual Devcom developers survey regarding microtransactions and the industry as a whole? For more Insider Gaming, check out all of the trophies you can collect in Star Wars Outlaws.
Game “Developers” are not the same thing as people in the business of selling games. Most, in programming, art, etc are completely oblivious to the actual costs and returns from sales. They only find out their employers are in the red when they get laid off. As the business teams and marketers.
The myth of games being “too expensive to make”, and of microtransactions being “necessary to support developers” have been thoroughly debunked over the years.
And it keeps getting debunked; I don’t think microtransactions support developers when they’re being laid off by the hundreds and the thousands so a managerial, C-suite figure can make investors think they’ll be the ones to reach the unsustainable goal of Infinite Growth Forever.
Paraphrasing someone else’s important remark: making and publishing videogames is literally your job. If it’s too expensive to do your job, and considering the indie scene and the many non-hyper-monetised games being made, it shouldn’t be, then it seems less an issue of the industry, and more that your coffers are a black hole that cannot be sated by regular good business.