Hello, community! 2025 is already behind us, and it feels right to take one last look back and sum it up — specifically by revisiting the phenomena that, one way or another, shaped the gaming industry. Last time, a similar piece focused exclusively on games: Palworld, Helldivers 2, Balatro, and so on. This time, the scope is a bit broader. I’m sure you’ve already heard about the phenomena mentioned here, so this is less about introducing them and more about inviting another round of discussion around the questions they raise. Let’s take a closer look together at who really deserves the title of a “phenomenon” — and whether they truly do.

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. A not-quite-indie phenomenon

Some readers will likely argue with this claim, but it’s fair to say that the RPG from Sandfall Interactive was the biggest release of last year. The idea for “Project W” (the development codename for Expedition 33) came to game director Guillaume Broche shortly before the COVID pandemic. In 2023, the developers announced a partnership with publisher Kepler Interactive, and on March 22, 2025, the game officially went gold. Yes, “coincidentally” — exactly 33 days before release.

What followed is well known: 500,000 copies sold on day one, 1 million within 3 days, and 5 million in 6 months. Enthusiastic responses from players and critics alike, a 92% score on Metacritic and 97% on OpenCritic, and near-total domination at The Game Awards 2025. The game was nominated in almost every category and took home trophies in nine major ones, including Game of the Year, Best Indie Game, Best Indie Debut, and Best Game Direction, among others. The last time a game achieved comparable success at the “gaming Oscars” was Baldur’s Gate 3. Notably, Larian Studios’ RPG reportedly had a budget of around $100 million, while Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 was developed on just $10 million.

Just a few days after its triumph at TGA, Expedition 33 became embroiled in an AI-related scandal. This time, it happened at the Indie Game Awards. As the organizers describe it, the awards are “an annual ceremony dedicated to celebrating excellence in indie games,” with a focus on developers, placing game creators at the center of attention. In 2025, Expedition 33 won in two categories at once — Game of the Year and Best Debut. However, just two days later, it lost both titles due to the use of AI.

The Indie Game Awards take a strict stance against the use of generative AI throughout the nomination process and during the ceremony itself. When the game was submitted for consideration, a representative of Sandfall Interactive confirmed that no generative AI had been used during the development of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. In light of the fact that, on the day of the Indie Game Awards 2025 ceremony, our attention was drawn to a previously published interview with Sandfall Interactive confirming the use of generative AI art in production, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is disqualified from the nomination.

The ceremony’s organizers stated.

The Best Debut award was given to the horror game Sorry We’re Closed, while Blue Prince was named Best Game. It is worth noting that Sandfall quickly removed the AI-generated assets, but this had no effect on the IGA’s decision.

However, in my view, neither the staggering success of Clair Obscur nor the AI scandal quite makes it a full-fledged phenomenon. That status is more closely tied to an age-old debate the game has reignited: what actually counts as “indie”? Many players have agreed that Sandfall’s project can only be called indie with a very large asterisk. First, while the game’s budget is clearly lower than that of a AAA title, it is still far beyond what is realistic for most indie productions. Second, the game was published by an experienced publisher, well known for releases such as Sifu, Scorn, Tchia, and others. Some also add the involvement of actor Charlie Cox to the list of arguments, although I personally don’t think he is that big a star (said with full respect for his Daredevil).

So I have a question for you that is both simple and complicated at the same time: Do you consider Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 an indie game? If not — why? If so, what’s the point? :)

Friendslop. Indie phenomena

On the other hand, if there’s one area where defining “indie” isn’t much of a problem, it’s the friendslop trend. This is another phenomenon from last year that’s worth revisiting. Notably, the “genre” itself didn’t emerge in 2025. Wikipedia, for instance, includes Among Us (2018), Lethal Company (2023), Content Warning (2024), and other games in this category. Still, it was last year that friendslop truly reigned in the literal sense of the word — even surpassing pandemic-era records.

Friendslop is usually defined as “a genre of low-cost cooperative games with low stakes and often a humorous tone, sold at accessible prices so an entire group of friends can easily buy them and start playing right away.” The term itself appeared on social media in the spring of last year and, although it was meant as a joke, quickly went viral. It reached peak popularity with the release of the survival game Peak.

The rise of this, if you’ll allow it, “genre” immediately sparked a wave of attempts to explain the secret behind its appeal. Some media outlets, for example, linked their popularity to the so-called “loneliness epidemic” that has affected men in recent years. In particular, they cited a 2023 survey showing that three out of four American Gen Z respondents “sometimes or always feel lonely.” Another study pointed to significant gaps in reported loneliness between young adult men and other adults in certain countries — specifically the United States, Iceland, and Denmark. And supposedly, it’s precisely this context that helped simple, fast-paced cooperative games explode in popularity.

Their rise really was explosive. According to data from the Alinea Analytics platform, the developers of Peak earned $87 million, while the creators of the horror game R.E.P.O — which provided the cover image for this piece — made even more: $147 million. Other standout successes include Schedule 1 and RV There Yet. Even Chris Zukowski, arguably the internet’s leading expert on game marketing, singled out friendslop as one of the major trends in the gaming industry, with horror friendslop in particular standing out.

However, there is no consensus around this term within the gaming community. Journalist Jay Castello, for instance, argues that friendslop cannot be considered a полноценний genre at all, and that the term itself isn’t really used in practice and mostly just annoys people. Binny Erlingsson, a partner at the investment firm Behold Ventures, agrees with this view and insists that the definition should be abandoned as quickly as possible.

My main point is that I don’t like the name itself. I know it’s a very new term, but it’s catching on fast, and I’d like to try to ‘kill’ it before it becomes fully entrenched, first and foremost because it sounds negative. To me, slop means something careless, thrown together, and trashy.

Erlingsson said

On the other hand, the team at Aggro Crab, the developers of Peak, has embraced the term and actively uses it to describe their game. In particular, Aggro Crab’s community lead, Paige Wilson, noted that the team has loved the term since it first appeared. Meanwhile, representatives of the indie studio Panic Stations said the following in one of their videos:

We’re… Panic Stations! A brand-new game studio run entirely by pigeons! We’re going to make fun, fresh, physics-based cooperative games with a sense of humor. You can call them ‘friendslop’ if you want — or not, if you don’t, lol.

The question here is slightly different, though. On the forum, we’ve already discussed attitudes toward the definition itself. What’s interesting now are two other questions: why have games like this become so popular specifically now?

AI is no longer just taking jobs. A bleak phenomenon

When looking back at the phenomena of 2025 in the gaming industry, it’s impossible to avoid the topic of artificial intelligence, for several reasons. The first is developer layoffs. As we already noted in the “bleak wrap-up,” last year wasn’t as devastating as 2024, but more than 5,300 game developers still lost their jobs. Companies, of course, explain this with restructuring, optimization, and “long-term strategic priorities.” We even did a light discourse analysis of that language.

In reality, though, AI played a significant role here as well. For example, in the fall, it became known that the Israeli company Playtika would cut around 20% of its global workforce — roughly 700–800 people. One former employee, speaking to us anonymously, said that prior to this, the team had been training artificial intelligence — writing detailed feedback and helping improve the tool. This is, of course, just one case, but similar patterns can be observed across other companies as well.

The second reason is the endless stream of videos from so-called AI enthusiasts, captioned things like “AI games will be incredible” or “this is the future of game development.” Anyone who spent even a little time on social media last year has seen these demos. In particular, Matt Shumer, founder of several AI startups, posted a short clip of a first-person shooter in October. If you watch it out of the corner of your eye and after a couple of drinks, it might even seem decent. But it doesn’t take much effort to notice a certain… roughness to this “game.”

And finally, the third reason is the impact on the market for gaming PCs and consoles. Last year PC enthusiasts were hit by the burden of rapidly rising RAM prices. According to IDC Vice President of Research Geoff Janukowicz, gamers are no longer a priority. At the same time, Samsung and SK Hynix are confident that the current memory crunch will not ease before the first half of 2027, and that elevated demand will persist even beyond 2028.

Notably, many initially assumed that the situation would not affect console players (which, let’s be honest, was a bit naïve). But it did. Analysts and industry experts began saying in unison that the PlayStation 6, expected in 2027–2028, as well as the next Xbox, could launch at significantly higher prices. The analytics firm TrendForce claims that rising memory prices are forcing brands to increase retail prices and are weakening demand — the company has even revised its forecast for console shipments in 2026 and now expects an annual decline of 4.4%, down from the initial estimate of 3.5%.

TrendForce also reminds us that fluctuations in the supply and demand of key components have already disrupted console shipments in the past. In 2021, Sony reduced its PS5 production target from 16 million to 15 million units due to semiconductor shortages. Similarly, in November 2022, Nintendo cut its sales forecast for the Switch from 21 million to 19 million units, and later down to 18 million. As for this situation, I don’t really have a question for you, dear community — though I’d be happy to read your thoughts on it.