Gaming is the farthest it has ever been from monopolized, though. The indy scene is very healthy, releasing a game on steam is so easy that the real problem is

Gaming is the farthest it has ever been from monopolized, though. The indy scene is very healthy, releasing a game on steam is so easy that the real problem is getting noticed amongst the flood of releases. It's also far easier to publish to a console than in the PS1 days. I understand your frustration with the large studio's monetization models, but the solution is to just ignore them. I was dumb enough to buy Fallout 76, but I treated that as an object lesson: even developers I 'trust' are capable of releasing absolute trash. Plus, the backlog of interesting games on my steam wishlist meant I could have very easily put the 60 bucks into 2-3 good games that aren't trying to push lootboxes or microtransactions.