Subscriptions. Y'know - like a service?

Otherwise you have to sell new products to make new money. You can make a sequel, or a no-kidding expansion, instead of charging ten actual dollars to let your character wear a hat that's already on your god-damn hard drive.

Or... you can make another game. This era dragging out games for ten years is a bizarre blip that's only maximizing their investment in antipattern suck-zones with instant access to your wallet.

Zero respect for 'people who rightly despise this also secretly crave it.' Cram that garbage.

None of this is about what I like. Charging money in games is a scam. Games make you value arbitrary nonsense - that is what makes them games. There is no intrinsic economic value to putting balls through hoops or clicking on heads. The exchange rate between enchanted scimitars and real-life hamburgers is nonexistent. It's a category error.

This abusive business model is half the industry, by revenue. It's in every genre, on every platform, at every price point. If we allow this to continue, there will be nothing else. Only legislation will fix this.