Devs are also contending with the issue because they pivot from any originality to make safe games in a popular genre du jour and then cynically overmonetize it. Chuds are a loud minority, but other gamers also haven’t bought Marathon, it’s not just online negativity that’s the problem because that has never impacted sales to any significant degree. It’s just that games are well enshittified and have become a bad value proposition and also everyone has libraries full of better games from times they were a better value proposition and also indie publishers have sprung that are doing a great job and prioritizing fun / quality.

Shit, I like gaming, especially since Linux became the default platform, but with a library of 1.5k+ titles in my family group, I’d have to be stupid to buy fucking GTAVI day one from the CEO that hates both games and me personally.