Gaming is bigger than ever before, and there are more people playing and making games more than ever in the entire history of the industry. With this increased number of developers and gamers, issues are more visible and arguably worse.

One of the first issues with modern gaming is the abuse of players’ wallets.

Games, especially on mobile, are increasingly pushy for players to spend real-life money in order to get rid of advertisements or to gain more in-game currency. Games like “Clash of Clans,” “My Singing Monsters,” and “Diablo Immortal” are especially guilty of doing this.

Junior Brayden Philpot puts it best: “It’s a microtransaction hell.”

It’s not just mobile games either; console games have adopted the microtransaction model. Games such as “Star Wars Battlefront 2” and “eFootball 2022” lock characters behind an extreme paywall at times.

Microtransactions aren’t the only way developers are pressuring the player to spend more money, downloadable content (DLC) are used to entice more spending.

In most modern games, especially ones with online elements, there are typically items that are locked behind a paywall. These items, while optional, can cause an imbalance in player progression.

Players who don’t spend money on games may find it hard to compete with someone who has paid money for in-game items.

For example, “Super Smash Brothers: Ultimate” has DLC fighters that can be purchased with real money, and If someone who doesn’t know how that character plays, they might have a disadvantage fighting them online.

Another issue is the state in which games are released.

Games take a lot of effort and time to create, and they require lots of testing in order to make sure they work properly.However, some games are rushed to release, making them either hard to play or impossible to complete.

Games like “Cyberpunk: 2077” were extremely impacted by this issue at launch, and “Cyberpunk” being released early did quite the number to its reputation. The game that was once hyped up as a truly next gen experience was released as a broken buggy mess, even causing it to be pulled from the Playstation Store.

One of the final issues with modern gaming is that some of the companies who develop games can be exploitative of their employees.

Certain companies will overwork their employees until they start to burnout, which could lead to lazy inclusions in otherwise great games. Other companies will monitor their workers heavily, and some may even pay certain workers less because of the color of their skin or gender.

Activision Blizzard was outed for some of these practices, with additional claims of sexual harassment and drunkenness inside the workplace. Even worse, an employee reportedly committed suicide over the sexual harassment she was receiving.

Some of these issues are rather serious, and they should not be ignored. If the industry fails to face the consequences of mistreating its employees and the people who play video games, the cracks will get bigger until the industry could face a crash similar to one in 1983.