By Dexerto | Created at 2025-03-28 13:21:49 | Updated at 2025-04-04 20:32:29
1 week ago
Minh Le, the co-creator of Counter-Strike, has expressed concerns about the saturation of “sh*tty games” in today’s market, and the increasing difficulty for new developers to succeed.
Speaking in an interview with YouTuber DeZolance, Le explained how the industry has changed drastically over the past two decades.
“The game industry today is way different than what it was 20 years ago,” he said, when asked what he would do if he was making a game today.
“It’s just so much more competitive. I mean, you have people making great games, and the market is really, really saturated with a lot of great games,” he said.
However, he also pointed out that “at the same time, it’s also saturated with a lot of sh*tty games where people are just trying to make a quick buck.”
CS co-creator on the gaming industry today
Le lamented that this oversaturation makes it difficult for genuinely innovative games to gain traction. “It makes it really hard for the good games to get noticed because they have to fight for attention in a sea of all these crappy, quick games that are not really worthy,” he said.
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Le also noted the significant role marketing now plays in a game’s success, something he did not have to focus on during Counter-Strike’s rise to prominence. “Back then, marketing was something that I didn’t really spend too much time on. It just happened organically,” he explained. “These days, yeah, you have to really spend the money on marketing.”
Despite the challenges, Le remains hopeful that innovative games can still break through, citing titles like PUBG and DayZ, both of which originated as community-driven mods before gaining mainstream success.
“If a game truly offers something interesting, people will notice,” he said. “Games like DayZ, they kind of came from the modding community, people just making mods.”
Le acknowledged the difficulty of making an impact in today’s landscape, and that he got lucky with timing. “I feel really lucky to have gotten into the game industry when it was in its early stages,” he admitted.
“Honestly, I don’t know if I would have succeeded if I tried to redo Counter-Strike today. All I know is it would have been much more difficult because it would just be so competitive.”
