2019 was the year things got weird for video games

The video games industry is odd. This is a business where the leading companies regularly reset their market share every five-to-seven years. But over the last 12 months, we’ve seen a number of new trends that make video games seem like an even stranger beast — and one that is ready to change again.

The ways in which this industry are changing are plentiful, but they all seem like they are springing from the same underlying reasoning: making games is hard, but publishers and platform-holders could do more to make it less risky. And one of the ways companies are doing that is with a major focus on subscription services.