When it was released in 1993, Doom — which was developed for under $1M USD — was earning id software $100k/day immediately upon release, in shareware registrations alone.

It's no wonder capitalist leeches saw those returns and wanted to insert themselves in the process. Of course the more who latch on, the more value they need to extract by screwing over both the devs and the players.

Obviously the devs and players are actually the only two groups who are necessary in this relationship, and they're the ones getting soaked.

PS by "devs" I mean anyone who works on the game to make it better.

It's mobile games. It has always been mobile games.

A large part of the population is simply unwilling to treat games as a medium that requires quick reactions, precision and thinking. To them, gaming more like spinning slots in a casino. Until about 2012, these people didn't realize such games existed on consoles or the PC, so we were safe. Eventually mobile app stores tapped into this massive market, got enormous returns and made everyone else realize how many people were willing to engage with a glorified skinner box.

Every fiscally responsible company now has to assess the degree of implementing these dogshit gameplay loops, instead of just not doing that like they used to.

The only AAA games safe from this are the ones that are extremely hard (complex) as a baseline. Stuff like Path Of Exile and Elden Ring.

Those shareholders? Dentists. No love lost between them and the gamers.