Sometimes it's nice to have someone say out loud what's on their mind, as is the case with the Game Developers' Conference's State of the Games Industry 2024 report.

One of the many questions GDC has posed to developers over the years is to ask which platforms they are targeting with their current projects. While the answers always range from the obvious (PlayStation, Xbox, Nintendo consoles) to the obscure (Playdate, Luna, "Google Stadia"), there is one platform that more than half of developers have focused on over the years: PC.

Of the more than 3,000 developers surveyed by the GDC, when asked to select all platforms for their current projects, 66% chose PC, far ahead of the next most popular platform: the PS5, at 35% The GDC also found that " humble personal computer as the "dominant platform," despite the fact that strange new entrants like the "Nintendo Switch successor" and "UGC platforms (Roblox, Minecraft)" are beginning to appear on the list of responses.

In fact, the number is the highest in a decade: in 2020, 56% of developers listed the PC as their target platform; in 2021, 58%; in 2022, 63%; last year, 64%; and in 2024, 66%. Still at the top.

Responses to "Which platform are you most interested in as a developer right now?" are also nearly identical, although the number of respondents choosing PCs has declined slightly since last year; 62% of developers chose PCs as the platform they are most interested in, down from 64% in 2023, same level as in 2022, and up significantly from 50% in 2020.

To be clear, this is not a huge surprise. In a survey of this number of developers, a very large number of whom are indies, it is not surprising that they would prefer a platform that is open and relatively easy to release, such as the PC. But this is a temperature check for the industry as a whole, and some appreciate the odd antidote to the repeated declarations that PC gaming is dead. It's not that it's a weight off my shoulders or anything.

The 2024 report has a number of other helpful facts. First, 77% of respondents said they are "not interested" in cryptocurrencies or blockchain technologies such as NFTs. This is not much different from the responses when this question was first posed in 2022 (72% were not interested in crypto and 70% in NFT then), but the number of developers who said they were "somewhat interested" has more than halved, falling from 21% to 11%. Well done, Internet. You guys keep bullying the NFT out of the game.

However, don't let your guard down: 6% stubbornly said they were "very interested," and they can't all be Mr. Yves Guillemot. [While the fact that 76% of developers use Twitter and 97% of them are dissatisfied with it is deeply relatable, it is not the only major takeaway from the survey. We also found that after the buyout craze, developers are increasingly wary of large acquisitions, and that 31% of developers are using generative AI. The future is now, whether we like it or not.