Publicly traded videogame publishers have seen stock drops across the board, thanks to an overall decrease in investor confidence caused by extreme turmoil in the American financial sector.

September 15 witnessed what some have called the biggest financial industry changes since the Great Depression, as major firms Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch succumbed to bad bets on real estate—while Bank of America acquired the latter, the former filed for the largest bankruptcy in American history. This caused the Dow Jones to drop nearly 500 points, as the tech-oriented NASDAQ likewise tumbled down 3.6 percent, its largest single session decrease in over five years.

Games industry stock suffered with the rest of the market The majority of major games publishers weathered a decrease in stock price Monday, with woes continuing into Tuesday. Activision Blizzard’s stock hit a 52-week low Tuesday, as did THQ’s. Meanwhile, Take-Two’s stock price continues to tumble following the pull of EA’s buyout bit; as of this writing, shares of the company were down nearly 30 percent compared to the open of market on Tuesday, September 9.

While Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter says that confident “should” remain high, he tells Edge, “It's hard to say that investors have confidence in anything at the moment. THQ is melting down, near a five year low. EA is also near its five year low, so it would be silly to say that investors are showing a lot of confidence in the sector.”

He added, “It's hard to be rational when we have such turmoil.”