this post was submitted on 18 Mar 2025
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[–] suite403@lemmy.world 1 points 1 minute ago

Because we have a giant backlog of steam sales.

[–] ItsJannnneee@lemmy.blahaj.zone 7 points 58 minutes ago

Most new AAA games suck, that's why. I miss when games were made with passion rather than for a quick soulless cashgrab.

[–] skozzii@lemmy.ca 2 points 1 hour ago

What about new games, like world of warcraft.

[–] arotrios@lemmy.world 56 points 4 hours ago (3 children)

Honestly, most new games just fucking suck. They're too expensive, often don't run properly at launch even on excellent hardware, and those that don't have micro-transactions built-in require you to purchase DLC to get the whole game.

On the other hand, the older titles almost always run well on my machine, have a ton of community DLC, and in general are just designed better because they were built to bring the player as much fun as possible, not to extract as much money as possible.

Plus, the quality content generated from 2005 - 2015 represents some of the best ever, and can provide hundreds of hours of enjoyment before you even get into the 2010s. Why waste money on something that may not work, and that I likely won't enjoy as much as the games I bought 10 years ago?

It's why I usually wait at least a year after release to consider whether or not I'm going to buy a title.

[–] ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de 4 points 36 minutes ago

For sure, and my backlog is huge. I have tons to still play. I'm just now getting around to gta5 on my steam deck. I also just finished re-playing the original ff7 with some mods that made it look way nicer than back when I played it on my ps1 in the 90's. I could go another 5 years without catching up to 2020 if I wanted to.

[–] GuyFleegman@lemmy.dbzer0.com 15 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

New AAA games suck.

I either play indies or old AAA games. It all went to shit around the beginning of the PS4/X1 era, so yeah, my upper bound is about 2013.

[–] neon_nova@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 1 hour ago

I tend to agree with you, I think the downfall started in the ps3 era since that’s when online was in every console. I understand your idea that it was bad in ps4 era since devs had the time to figure out how to makes things worse due to the ability to use the internet to sell things/deliver patches.

[–] Abnorc@lemm.ee 9 points 2 hours ago

I don't know if I agree about new games. This is a bit of a problem with some AAA games though. The indie game scene is still thriving as far as I can tell, in some genres more than others. (E.g now is a great time to be into FPS games.)

A good old game can occupy you for many hours though, and it's hard to make good games period. I'm not surprised that a few older games dominate the market.

[–] afronaut@slrpnk.net 13 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

That reminds me— I gotta do another Fallout: New Vegas run.

[–] tal@lemmy.today 5 points 2 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago) (1 children)

Are you familiar with the A Tale of Two Worlds mod, which inserts Fallout 3 into Fallout: New Vegas to make them one giant game? If not, it's a way to add some new life to the thing.

[–] afronaut@slrpnk.net 4 points 2 hours ago

Yes, actually that was my intended next run! I just gotta remember how to set up everything.

[–] cod@lemmy.world 6 points 2 hours ago (1 children)
[–] jnod4@lemmy.ca 3 points 26 minutes ago

JOINED, any more ways to find sublemmings idk what are these called lol

[–] capuccino@lemmy.world 3 points 1 hour ago

if you mean i do spend my time playing nes and snes via emulator, you are right

I do not. I haven't played a gamer older than thirty years old in years

[–] doingthestuff@lemy.lol 10 points 3 hours ago

I'm playing Fallout 4 right now. It's not the only game I play by any means. Too many new games are overly focused on graphics or monetization. I'm always trying new games and the better ones often don't have the best graphics. We want 2010 gameplay. Hell, I'll still play Unreal Tournament 1999 GOTY edition, but older games usually need resolution and texture upgrade mods. Fortunately a lot of great old games actually get them.

[–] jjjalljs@ttrpg.network 13 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

I find it kind of funny how games are becoming more mainstream, but every once in a while I still meet people that are like "games are a waste of time". But then again I guess people said that about movies and tv and still do sometimes.

Also I've been playing guild wars 2 again. Base game is like 10 years old but it's still fun

[–] afronaut@slrpnk.net 6 points 3 hours ago

I think the people who often say this feel some personal guilt for how much time they feel they’ve wasted instead of doing whatever it is in life they have yet to achieve. It’s a matter of perspective.

[–] Kolanaki@pawb.social 7 points 3 hours ago (2 children)

I don't even know what the newest game I even own is... Helldivers 2? Except for Elden Ring and it's DLC, I haven't bought anything close to release for years. HD2 came out last year and I bought it last week.

[–] TheLowestStone@lemmy.world 5 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

Baldur's Gate 3 and Elden Ring are the last 2 AAA games I bought close to launch for full price. Other than that, I picked up Hades 2 in early access. The rest of my library is all stuff that I bought on sale.

I do have Monster Hunter and Avowed on my wishlist but I think I'm going to be patient. If I do pull the trigger, it would probably be for Avowed because I want more Obsidian games. On a related note Grounded is $20 on Steam right now so I stopped that up even though I beat it back when I had Game Pass.

[–] kiwifoxtrot@lemmy.world 1 points 56 minutes ago (2 children)

BG3 isn't an AAA title. Larian is an indie studio.

[–] TheLowestStone@lemmy.world 1 points 23 minutes ago

Based on the size of the company and the budget for the game I'd at least call it a AA game. My real point is I paid full price for it and have absolutely no regrets.

[–] lapping6596@lemmy.world 1 points 45 minutes ago

Huh, I thought of them as AA. I get indie means independent which they are, but they're a studio with multiple successful releases even before bg3.

[–] tonytins@pawb.social 3 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

Yeah, I've lost track myself. I just follow feeds that alert of me free deals.

[–] Kolanaki@pawb.social 2 points 2 hours ago

I actually learned that I can't even sort my Steam library by release date because of this thread. Otherwise I would actually know lol

[–] M137@lemmy.world 18 points 4 hours ago

When people found out PhysX doesn't work on the new Nvidia cards I saw several people here on Lemmy say that it doesn't matter because almost no one plays older games. I seriously don't understand how anyone could think that, it's astoundingly stupid and ignorant.

[–] Nino477@lemmy.world 26 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

There are just so many good games out there. No time to play them all. Also i think epic free games and this prime free game stuff contributed to it. I just started playing bioshock bc of it. Also on pc it feels so good to play an old game and just crank up every setting to max, 4k, install some mods, no ai upscaling but msaa 8x and not having to worry about performance even on mid range PCs. I genuinely prefer the graphics of older games since for me image clarity is much more important than how many polygons a gun has or how the puddle of water reflects light. Like even the new unreal engine 5 games cannot run maxxed out on a 5090 in 4k without upscaling. They only look good in trailers.

[–] tal@lemmy.today 16 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

!patientgamers@sh.itjust.works might be of interest, if you don't follow it.

But yeah...there are a lot of perks to playing older games:

  • Due to the ubiquity of Internet access today, a lot of games get post-release patches, and ship in a not-entirely-polished state. You wait a few years, you get a game that's actually finished.

  • There have been wikis, guides, and sometimes mods created.

  • The games that people are still playing are the ones that have stood the test of time, so it's kinda easy to pick out good ones.

  • If a 3D game supports a higher framerate


and many don't, due to things like physics running at a fixed frequency


on modern, high-refresh-rate monitors, 3D games can be pleasantly smooth.

There are some downsides, though:

  • With multiplayer-oriented games, the community can have moved on, rendering the game not very playable.

  • The game may not leverage your hardware very well. You may have an 86 bazillion core processor, and especially older games are likely to be using one of them. I have a couple of games I like, like Oxygen Not Included, that really don't use multiple cores well...and I'd guess that a similar game released in 2025 likely would.

[–] HK65@sopuli.xyz 8 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

Due to the ubiquity of Internet access today, a lot of games get post-release patches, and ship in a not-entirely-polished state. You wait a few years, you get a game that’s actually finished.

And also, 60 EUR for a single game is a price at least I am not willing to pay for the average game, so in addition to getting a better game, I also get a cheaper one.

There is stuff worth paying that much out there, but it's not Call of Duty Black Ops Eleventeen

[–] Level9831@lemmy.world 4 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago) (3 children)

Black ops 6 is so bad IMHO. It takes forever to boot up the game and then hits you with the "update available, quit & restart". Then waiting another 5 mins to download the update, then another couple mins to reach the main menu again. Oh and what was the actual update? To hit me with an advertisement video of season whatever...with new purchases for dumb costumes etc. Like c'mon just let me play the damn game already! When Im finally in a match the gameplay feels rigged...like I'm playing slots in Vegas than an actual video game. The respawns appearing out of nowhere. I honestly believe what I'm seeing on my screen is not what the other player is seeing. Its like these game designers purposely made this game based on an algorithm rather than setting game rules and allowing the players to compete based on skill. Maybe I'm way off on this (and am just a terrible cod player lol) but would like to hear other people's opinion on this.

all the advertisements, constantly wanting me to spend more money when the game was already expensive to begin with. The game play as described as above. Also the perks/tiers suck. Makes for a very unenjoyable experience. The game is just not fun.

[–] Nelots@lemm.ee 2 points 1 hour ago

I will say, the zombies mode is the best version in many years. For the low price of $0 through gamepass (which I get for free through an MS Rewards farming script), I can't complain too much about it. But I wish they would just release a standalone zombies game at some point, it's literally the only thing I like about cod and would gladly actually buy it (assuming it isn't ass, which is like 50/50 with cod lol).

[–] HK65@sopuli.xyz 2 points 1 hour ago

We're at Black Ops 6 already? They made 6 of them? Are there other Call of Duty games as well since? I think the last I played was Infinite Warfare, I think I have WWII in my library unplayed.

I kinda lost track of the AAA treadmill.

[–] Paradachshund@lemmy.today 1 points 1 hour ago

I actually really have enjoyed the game itself but you aren't fucking kidding about the rest of it. It's truly insane how much friction there is between deciding to play and getting into a lobby.

[–] tal@lemmy.today 98 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago) (10 children)

7.1% of the total hours spent were on Counter-Strike: Global Offensive / Counter-Strike 2
6.4% were in League of Legends
6.2% were in Roblox
5.8% were in Dota 2
5.4% were in Fortnite

That is a lot of people playing free-to-play competitive multiplayer games.

[–] GoumLeChat@jlai.lu 77 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago) (17 children)

Free is an important reason why. Also, these games run very well on old machines. If you mostly play that and get a new rig, you don't have to spend a lot. Pc parts have gotten ridiculously expensive.

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[–] Aggravationstation@feddit.uk 11 points 5 hours ago

11.35% of the human population.

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