this post was submitted on 18 Mar 2025

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PC gamers spend 92% of their time on older games, oh and there are apparently 908 million of us now (www.pcgamer.com)

submitted 6 hours ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 38 points 2 hours ago (2 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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 minutes ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 48 minutes 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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 36 minutes ago

This would be a great time to promote [email protected]

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 hour 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.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 2 points 37 minutes ago* (last edited 37 minutes 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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 27 minutes ago

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

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 hour 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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 51 minutes ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 2 points 31 minutes 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

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 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

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 hour 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.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 2 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.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 3 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.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

[email protected] 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.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 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

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago) (2 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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 13 minutes 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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 minutes 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.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 hours ago

launches Baldur's Gate.exe ♪♫ "Brave, brave Sir Garrick, Sir Garrick led the way. Brave, brave Sir Garrick, Sir Garrick ran away." ♪♫

[–] [email protected] 11 points 3 hours ago

11.35% of the human population.

[–] [email protected] 90 points 6 hours ago* (last edited 6 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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 hour ago* (last edited 1 hour ago)

besides the lower bar of entry due to being free, Midias research has shown that the younger generation prefers online multiplayer, and as you grow older, you start to favor single player games more.

[–] [email protected] 70 points 5 hours ago* (last edited 5 hours ago) (15 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.