> developers were able to build incredible open worlds with hours of dialog and tons of possibilities worth 100s of hours of gameplay on a single pay model Thi

> developers were able to build incredible open worlds with hours of dialog and tons of possibilities worth 100s of hours of gameplay on a single pay model This is not a defence of the current state of the industry, but let's not get too rosy with our nostalgia glasses. As the content increased and fidelity improved, production costs skyrocketed. The majority of games failed commercially. A commercial failure with a big production budget could (and regularly did) easily destroy a studio. Even a pretty big multi-title studio. The churn and carnage was dramatic. Then with an alternative distribution and the availability of tools, the race-to-the-bottom pricing was on. Further increasing the pressure on production. There were always games being released on the single pay model, but it was never a good risk profile for investors. That profile is almost suicidal when the investment is $200m vs $10m. There is still a healthy single pay tranche to the industry: indie games. And not coincidentally, production costs of a 'triple-I' game are not that dissimilar to the production costs of an average publisher-funded game 20 years ago.