I'm trying to work out the demographics of the top sellers list and one thing that really sticks out for me is EA sports. I'm sure that the battle royale crap is inevitably being astroturfed due to the fact that it's 'free' but it's baffling how that 'game' which really isn't a game let's be honest has consistently stuck in the top 20. As near as I can work out from youtube and the types of people that seem to be playing it, it seems to be football nerds that are giving it the main bump and normies on top of that.
I supposed I should be grateful that there are some somewhat gamer games popping up on the top seller list lately. I'm bringing it up because I'm deeply suspicious of a lot of these bland corporate titles given how much everybody even the people who used to like playing them is fed up now yet they still keep churning away making money which is very curious. If I had half their marketing skills and marketing team I'd be a billionaire already but I wouldn't be surprised if there was something more going on here because of how often Valve deliberately looks the other way when it comes to fake reviews especially.
I'm just amazed there are people out there who will spend $60+ on a game they don't even like and admit has gotten shit then clearly keep buying micro-transactions for that very same game.
There is supposed to be some connection to the underground (Yakuza) within the Japanese gaming industry at least historically u/AlfredicEnglishRules I think might have some sources for details on it. He also might have some on the American market, but to a large extent one could argue the industry was already within the criminal element.
The Japanese Yakuza part isn't even subtle. They were the only organization the US military was willing to work with on certain projects. Nintendo was a gambling card company before they discovered toys and then videogames. Sega was originally Service Games or SG. Japanese initials include the next vowel. Sony was a parts manufacturer. They all got funding from the Yakuza and US military to start new ideas in Japan as part of rebuilding it.
Videogames in the US got their start in Chicago arcade businesses. There's a reason why LaGuardia destroyed and banned pinball. When he was mayor, they didn't even have flippers for the machines, so it was pure luck.
Atari was started by an investor and two engineers. We openly talk about the engineers like Nolan Bushnell, but not the investor. His name is in books like the Ultimate History of Videogames, but you can't find it if you looked at the book on Google docs.
In the same book, you find out Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak worked at Atari. Jobs wanted help in starting Apple and went to Bushnell for investors. Guess who was introduced?
That was the same time Hollywood investors started going outside for new ventures. Places like Las Vegas or Silicon Valley, or even Theme Parks for that description. You can find the investors by looking at books or mob movies. There's a great museum in Vegas that is about how Vegas got started.
You can tell sales numbers when you see possible sales vs actual sales. The Genesis sold 30-40 million consoles, but it's top selling game sold 10 Million. The PS1 sold 100 million consoles, and it's top game sold 12 million. PS2 sold 160 Million consoles, and GTA San Andreas was 19 Million. The reason why the Wii had manufacturing problems was because Nintendo based everything off of Sony official numbers. No one knew what an actual 100 Million sales looked like.
Then you look for a popular niche. Videogames are huge to gamers, and non existent to everyone else. D&D is for nerds, but the company is doing well. Bookstores are everywhere, but none of the companies seem to be doing the same. That weird state of popular bankruptcy is common. With digital books, games and more you see it happening a lot. I doubt Valve is directly involved, but sales themselves are. DEI is a great way to make sure the company stays hidden but public. You get a company that always seems to be going bankrupt, and yet is well known enough no one would care if they saw a truck hauling their stuff.
They fix their books for investors vs IRS anyway, why not one more? This shows up in history books about the companies all the time. The guy who founded Universal never kept any paperwork on deals, because that could be used as evidence. We have way too many stories about two engineers who start a company and then become billionaires without any mention of how they got the funding or sold anything. We owe the mob a ton for everything, but it's hard to get out of that mess. We still need the idiot engineers starting businesses, but who will fund them? Why would anyone fund them unless they intended to use it for something else?
The only real company that has, and been successful afterwards, is Nintendo. They have no qualms with publicly working with Yakuza or military based companies. Pilotwings 64 did so well, the military simulation company made a branch that made games. Konami, Capcom, and every arcade company you can think of are in the mob somehow, and they all have games on Nintendo Consoles. Making good games, and being ahead of the curve on marketing has kept them ahead of the popular niche market for decades. There should be a book on this, but no one is willing to write it.