In just 2017, Steam published over 6000 games. That’s just for the PC. Granted, the vast majority of those are indie games, and most of these games only clock in at a few hours, generally, less than 10, but it is a worrying sign for gamers trying to find the best games out there, and an impossible task for reviewers. Although Steam’s community reviews have done a great job sorting out the chafe from the good – giving us a chance to find games like Hollow Knight – it still highlights the very real problem of there simply being too much content.

For example, in just MOBAs, Dota 2, League of Legends, and Heroes of the Storm dominate the scene, but this forgets smaller MOBAs like Smite or the slew of phone games copying the genre. The same is true across the entire online gaming industry – some rise to the top, and then dozens attempt to take them down. This trend of copycatting has given rise to terms like Souls-esque and Metroidvania. We didn’t always need terms for these things, but as dozens of games came out in rapid succession fitting similar styles, it was all game sites and players could do to keep up.

But even as the market becomes cluttered with games, publishers are pushing for games to become exponentially longer. This isn’t just through the open-world, although that is a huge factor in prolonging game length, but in microtransactions and loot boxes. Shadow of War added loot boxes and farming to a single-player experience, not only massively extending its lifespan, but also extending its ability to generate profits. And this is something EA has commented on as a huge direction they are interested in taking all gaming, one of the reasons they are currently in such hot water as well.

Publishers have realized that the best way to make money is to add microtransactions and loot boxes to games, even games they don’t make sense in. By simply adding additional content, piles and piles of it in some cases, and then hiding it behind paywalls, publishers have found a way to extend profits far beyond traditional means. What that means for us is games simply take longer to beat, and for completionists, some games get completely taken off the table without paying up. Few gamers have the time to dedicate the 10+ hours it takes to unlock one character in Star Wars Battlefront 2 and to try and explore and play all the other content out there.

The scale of games is reaching a tipping point because of this. Publishers want to release fewer and fewer AAA titles, focusing instead on milking the profits from singular titles. On the other hand, indie developers have unprecedented freedom to create and publish. The division between AAA and indie is going to continue to widen as one chases profits, and the other chases creativity. The new scandals involving Battlefront 2 may help to change the tide, but it’s unlikely.

It’s hard to predict what this means for the industry, but it seems likely that quality will deteriorate as it did following the first big movement for DLC. Many gamers hated DLC when publishers abused it and tried too hard to profit from it. Eventually, the market normalized to a point of understanding on DLC. We can only hope the same happens with microtransactions, but none of that is going to help for trying to navigate the massive amount of titles increasing every year. That one is a much harder fix.