This week, Build a Rocket Boy, developer of MindsEye, finally bit the dust. So did I when Steam announced the pricing for Steam Frame, their upcoming VR headset. Some YouTube drama somewhat intersected with gaming, and I just had to talk about it. Revenue streams are under attack for game makers by a proposed EU law that could ban battle passes and a higher percentage of gamers who cancel their gaming subscriptions citing high prices as a primary concern.
Steam Frame Makes Me Look Foolish
No, I don’t mean when I actually wear it.
About 10 months ago, I made some predictions with some colleagues about the eventual costs of Valve’s new line of Steam hardware, namely the Steam Machine, Steam Frame, and new Steam Controller. This week, Valve announced the Steam Frame’s launch price, the final piece of the new Steam hardware collection. That means now is the time for some humble reflection.
Let’s start off on a strong note: the Steam Machine. I predicted that the Steam Machine would ring in at $1,000. A great prediction! The final price for a base-level Steam Machine (512 GB without a controller) is set at $1,049. My reasoning was that everybody seemed to expect that the Steam Machine would rival consoles. However, in all of Valve’s marketing, they made it quite clear that the Steam Machine’s competition is introductory gaming PCs. Putting the word “introductory” doesn’t soften the blow, though. Gaming PCs are expensive. My thought was that about $1,000 is what I personally would expect to pay for a gaming PC with a built-in operating system. However, my prediction doesn’t entirely come out smelling like roses. This prediction was at a time before we started hearing about the most severe cases of hardware prices spiking. If Valve had released the Steam Machine during a different era, they’ve said that they would’ve targeted a lower price point. If I were to guess, probably still higher than console base prices ($500), so maybe $800?
And that was my best guess. It’s downhill from here. I thought Steam Controllers would cost $80. Seemed like a price that was pretty consistent with other controllers out there. Maybe a little pricier in some cases. Actual price: $99. Swing and a miss. For my fellow math nerds out there, that’s 25% higher than my prediction. Pretty abysmal.
And finally, the hardware of the hour. The Steam Frame was announced at a price point starting at $1,059 (256 GB). Not only is my guess outrageously off, I actually thought it would cost less than the Steam Machine. I estimated an $800 price tag.
Very not good. Again, hardware prices are a crazy roller coaster that doesn’t have a down part. I think it would’ve been difficult to predict just how out of hands prices would get 10 months ago. Still, I can’t help but feel foolish now that the Steam Frame’s price is out there.
A 1 TB version of the Steam Frame is also available for $1,299.
MindsEye Developer Goes Under
Build a Rocket Boy (BARB), the development studio behind MindsEye, has made more cuts to its workforce and now will be closing down. Mindseye will definitely go down as the biggest flop in video games in 2025. It may even be on lists forevermore as one of the biggest flops in video game history. After five years of development with no prior projects completed for a studio of over 500 people, led by a name synonymous with high-quality, open-world games, Mindseye managed to underwhelm everyone and become a laughing stock across the video game industry.
Now, about 15 months after the game’s release, BARB has undergone at least a third round of layoffs, a round that will be total and final. A month after players got their hands on the game, an estimated 300 employees lost their jobs. It’s heartbreaking for anybody being affected. These layoffs keep compounding in the video game industry due to so many factors colliding at once. The 2020s will simultaneously go down as one of the worst decades for the industry’s history and a potential golden age for players due to tremendously beloved games.
With such great games being made and such troublesome times coinciding, it leaves a lot of people to ask, “What the hell happened?” The answers are various and not so simple. However, I think BARB possibly serves as a golden example of those things colliding. Here are the events that have been happening with increased frequency across the industry:
A well-known figurehead in AAA game development (Leslie Benzies) breaks away from their long-time employer (Rockstar) to start their own AAA studio. The company gets plenty of interest and backing simply because of the name attached to it.
The company thinks it can immediately start making AAA games by going on a hiring spree with all of their newfound money. In BARB’s case, they reached somewhere around 550 employees.
The new company has to take on all of these people and all of this financial burden to make the game of the scale, genre, and quality that they envision. Meanwhile, they have to build a culture, build pipelines, build communication, and do so rapidly.
The company spends way too much time on an idea that isn’t fully fleshed out, is too derivative, and/or has poor direction. All the while, the company spends excessive amounts of money with nothing of quality to show for it.
The project releases to boos and ughs across the industry, and the studio has to institute layoffs and/or close immediately because they have no more money and aren’t earning any.
And with some combination of these steps happening across the industry fairly consistently, here are some of the ultimate problems that you can see at a place like BARB:
Investors put too much money in the wrong places. To be fair, I’m not a business guy. That’s not my passion. I do read a lot and have learned a lot about video games from people far more experienced than me, though. Ultimately, a lot of investors out there with tons of money have their ideas of “risk” backwards for the industry that we’re in. This industry is largely driven by hits. And hits almost always come from innovation; sometimes that’s innovative technology, other times it’s gameplay mechanics, it could be graphics, it could be any number of things; often, it’s a combo of many innovative ideas. That’s because video games are an art form. The audiences for that art form don’t want to see the same old art they’ve seen for 20 years, or even 10 years, or even in the past year. Audiences are hungry for something new, even if it’s a new take on something that’s been done before. However, Investors are concerned with risk, and to them, the least “risky” games are the ones that are clones of what’s already done well in the past. In reality, the least “risky” games are the ones that are doing something different than what was successful yesterday.
Studios spend way too long on games. BARB spent five years developing MindsEye, and supposedly, conceptualization of the Everywhere project started back in 2016, the sort of precursor to MindsEye. This thing took a long-ass time to make. Five years of paying a lot of people a lot of money in addition to plenty of other overhead. In what other industry what that sort of business model end well? Well, in the video game industry, it’s commonplace. It’s killing studios right now, especially since publishers keep so much of a game’s earnings. Five-year development timelines are completely unsustainable for probably 90%-99% of studios. Now, why do games take so long to make? Because…
Managers don’t say “no” to themselves enough. I think it’s tremendously important for game teams, particularly ones with north of maybe 10 or 15 people, to have somebody whose job it is to say “no.” And that person CANNOT be the director. When you’re directing a game, it can be extremely difficult to make decisions that you know will make your game worse. However, you can’t make your perfect game. That’s going to take too long and cost way too much money. Technologically, it might not even be possible. We have real constraints to work with in game development, but many managers, producers, and directors cannot seem to keep themselves and their teams on schedule. It’s happening all over at all times, and it’s just accepted as part of game development. Hell, it’s accepted as part of software development as a whole. Someone needs to be able to say, “No. We don’t have time to refactor this. We don’t have time to add that. We don’t have time to prototype this. We don’t have the time or budget.“
Proposed EU Gaming Law Changes
The proposed KIDS Act in the EU has an admirable goal of protecting children from content on the internet that could be threatening to their mental or physical wellbeing. I do not live in the EU. I am not a kid. I am not a parent. However, I do know that where I do live (the God Blessed United Fricken States of Fricken America), legislation such as this would rile people up. Anytime there’s talk about restricting what anybody in the country is or is not allowed to do on the internet, it’s a big deal. I would imagine there’s a similar level of discourse in the EU.
What’s interesting is how this act touches gaming. Dr. Andreas Lober via GamesIndustry.biz describes the KIDS Act as most controversial in regards to “social networks and video sharing platforms…“ However, naturally, any rules that are going to apply to the internet on a larger scale will also affect online gaming.
The most interesting point that Lober describes is how this could affect online game monetization. Across the world, the ways that game developers and publishers monetize games that are meant for, playable by, or advertised to children are constantly in question. Are loot boxes gambling, and therefore, do they necessitate a higher age rating for the game? How does virtual currency like coins, or gems, or doodads factor into this? What guidelines do game makers need to follow when selling in-game items/currencies? The list goes on.
In this particular act, the potential affects on monetization methodologies akin to season passes could be great. The season pass model usually gives out rewards to gamers for logging in every day, and of course, few players are simply logging in to collect their rewards; they’re playing for an hour or two as well, or maybe longer. Some passes also provide additional awards for completing certain challenges within the game.
If the KIDS Act has its way, online games will no longer be allowed by EU law to sell games that encourage minors to play excessively. Lober mentions that “it’s possible that there may prove to be a compliant way to incorporate such features, but it’s clear that they are viewed unfavourably no matter what.“ The KIDS Act also fights on the fronts of lootboxes and in-game currencies like I mentioned before, but they’re largely the same song and dance that we’ve heard a million times and still hasn’t seen sweeping government regulation.
Mighty Mike Plays
While only tangentially related to video games, I can’t help but talk about Mighty Mike Plays. If you don’t know, Mighty Mike Plays is a new Minecraft/Roblox YouTube channel for a nine-year-old kid named Mike. Over a couple of months, the channel has made some videos that have hundreds of thousands of views. How did he do it? Apparently, the channel has had a crazy marketing budget, paying through the nose for YouTube advertisements.
In a video from Mike’s dad, it turns out that all of this advertising budget came from his credit card undenounced to him. Worse yet, the credit card was his company’s card. Mike’s dad was brought before higher-ranking members of his company and asked why over $118,000 was spent recently on his card. It turns out, Mike had spent that much on advertising to get more eyes on his YouTube channel.
Initially, this garnered a lot of sympathy as Mike’s dad went further into descriptions of how this all stemmed from him agreeing to put $20 toward YouTube advertising for Mike and what this debacle could lead to for him and his family. He came across as genuine.
However, a follow-up video from Mike’s father has given people pause. In the follow-up, Mike’s father confirms that he lost his job, and the company is demanding that he pay back the $118,000 within 30 days in order to avoid getting lawyers and the legal system involved. He tugs on heart strings by outlining the family’s potential plan to sell their home. He also builds goodwill by describing how he doesn’t want to do a Go Fund Me campaign because he is capable of working for the money and dislikes the idea of accepting charity when it could be going to other people in worse situations. Instead, he wants to sell Mighty Mike Plays merch as a way to raise money to help pay back his company.
Many, though, have expressed their concerns that this could just be a scam after all. Some of the details are very strange and are telltale signs of a scam:
Ticking Clock. It’s strange that a large company like the one Mike’s dad supposedly works for would only allow for 30 days to pay back $118,000 that is confirmed to have already been spent. This feels more akin to the classic ticking clock that scammers like to put on situations to spur urgency and limit critical thinking, making victims more vulnerable. An additional layer of oddness comes from the father’s supposed plan to sell his house. I’m not sure how he thinks he would be able to sell his house in the current market in just 30 days.
Seemingly Disingenuous Father-Son Dynamic. It’s a little weird that Mike’s dad is making these videos in the first place and posting them on Mighty Mike Plays. Some of his interactions with his son during the two videos feel scripted, disingenuous, or otherwise unreal.
Very YouTubey Video Thumbnails. The two videos made by Mike’s dad have different thumbnails than the rest of Mike’s videos, and they appear to be more deliberately designed to capture attention in a classic YouTube way that casts doubt on the true purposes of these videos.
AI-Generated Merch. Some of the Mighty Mike Plays merch supposedly seems AI-generated. This sort of counters what Mike’s dad talked about in the second video. If Mike’s dad is insistent that he not take charity and actually provide value through work with his own two hands, then why use generative AI to create the merch?
Expensive Merch. This is crazy expensive merch. Think about the most recent time you bought a t-shirt at a concert. Now imagine that overpriced shirt now has AI-generated art on it that isn’t a quarter as good and costs twice as much. The t-shirts cost anywhere from $67 to $97 a piece.
What Does $118,000 of YouTube Ads Look Like? Some are speculating that if Mike’s dad did in fact get charged $118,000 in the short amount of time that he did, his YouTube ads would have generated a lot more views than the videos did.
Spending More Money. Creating merch and creating a website to sell it costs money. It’s weird that a father who’s now $118,000 in debt and contemplating selling his house
So what’s the truth? Is it all true? Is it all a lie? Naturally, I think it’s somewhere in the middle. There’s no denying that Mighty Mike Plays did pay for YouTube advertising. The comments on the videos with the most views have tons of people talking about how they saw the video as an advertisement. However, how much was actually spent on it? I think it’s entirely possible that this situation did take place but not to the scale that Mike’s dad claims. Maybe it was only $20,000. Maybe it was $50,000. Now, he’s trying to pull at the heart strings of viewers to turn his lemons into lemonade. Did he actually get fired from his job? Is there actually a 30-day timeline for him to pay it back? Maybe this all happened a month ago, and Mike’s dad needs to get this done in 30 days because he spent the first 30 days not accomplishing much to remedy the situation. Maybe the use of the company credit card isn’t as accidental as he makes it seem.
Regardless of the truth, the whole thing feels fishy.
Gaming Subscriptions Are Unaffordable
Data came to light this week that an estimated 40% of gamers in the U.S. who are canceling their XBOX Game Pass Essential, PS Plus essential, and Nintendo Switch Online subscriptions are doing so due to the cost. This is according to Circana, a market research firm. Nintendo Switch Online in particular suffers from a lack of value with 50% of cancelations due primarily to the cost.
Of course, the cost of living increases are no secret in the United States. Neither are the rise of prices in video games across the board, from hardware, to software, to subscriptions. When gamers evaluate their monthly budgets, it’s not surprising that they aren’t interested in holding onto their gaming subscriptions. It’s a luxury that keeps rising in cost.
This doesn’t necessarily indicate any rise or fall in the number of gamers subscribing to these services. In fact, it could very well indicate that the services are getting so good that factors other than price don’t drive players away as much as they once did.
However, I don’t think that’s necessarily the case. I believe “price” in a survey like this acts as a sort of catchall. If price is becoming more of a leading cause of cancelations, then the bottom line is that people who are canceling don’t feel they’re getting the value. Even when people are in dire straights financially, they have a tendency to keep subscriptions that they feel they’re getting good value from. In the case of these XBOX, PlayStation, and Nintendo subscriptions, prices are rising and what gamers get for having the subscriptions doesn’t change or, in some cases, even shrinks. For example, compared to this same time last year, XBOX Game Pass prices have risen while Call of Duty, one of the company’s biggest franchises, is no longer releasing to the service.
I don’t subscribe to these services for a number of reasons, but I can see why many gamers would see these services as their primary drivers for gaming. Tons of gamers could spend north of $275 a year for XBOX Game Pass Ultimate and walk away with a good deal. Playing four AAA games priced at $80 in a year with XBOX Game Pass makes the service worth it. That’s not many games. Alternatively, let’s say you’re more of an indie gamer. Game Pass gives access to a lot of smaller games that ring in between $20 and $40. The service pays for itself with seven to 14 games like that. A lot of players who enjoy indie games can manage to play dozens of indie games every year.
While that’s some napkin math that doesn’t take into account things like discounts on games’ base prices, it gives a good idea of how these subscriptions can actually make gaming cheaper for people, particularly if they only game on the one platform. However, with these price increases, it’s putting those gamers in a tough spot where they have to make difficult decisions to keep gaming affordable.