Looking at the situation from the point of view of the business angle is the correct way to understand the actions of large publishers, and it's refreshing to s

Looking at the situation from the point of view of the business angle is the correct way to understand the actions of large publishers, and it's refreshing to see someone doing so. I'm not sure that the numbers are interpreted in the same way by the author and by the executives at EA, though. When they see $800 million from loot boxes in FIFA, they don't see just 'hey this can work, lets try to make it work elsewhere.' They see 'hey, this is what gamers actually want.' Also, I'm a little unsure about some of the things said because I don't have a ton of knowledge about the performance of the different games discussed. Like at one point the author mentions "The SimCity backlash."... I do know a bit about that one. That SimCity game that got all the backlash? It immediately became the best-selling game of all time on the Origin service right after its launch. There is simply no way to classify that as anything except a resounding success from a business perspective. It is a fundamental mistake to listen to online talk from gamers as the audience has proven themselves to be their own worst enemy. They shovel mountains of money at the things they claim to hate, and withhold money from anything that deviates. It's not like there aren't games that don't follow these predatory practices. There are tons of them. And they don't make very much money. How can you back up a claim that gamers actually do want those different practices followed if every game which follows them languishes miles behind the titles which don't? If the public pronouncements of gamers actually mirrored their actions, listening to backlash might make sense for a company. But as it is, when the gaming community lights up with anger and "boycotts", that is the most reliable indicator of stellar sales. There really isn't a solution to this problem outside of gamers doing the one thing they seem constitutionally incapable of - not playing the games. Not preordering them, not buying them after release, not even pirating them, straight up not playing the games. (Buying the game and then stopping playing it shortly after release is actually the ideal situation for any publisher, it enables them to more rapidly reduce their spending on server resources and even piracy drives other sales.) I'm not sure why videogames have such a different audience compared to all other forms of media. In other forms of media, the audience vehemently defends their chosen medium, combatting censorship, responding to exploitative practices with substantial actions to back up their complaints, fighting for the rights of the audience over those of the publishers, etc. But we see no significant amount of any of that when it comes to videogames.