GaaS is a fad with a fundementally flawed concept and that's without getting into how bad the games in this vein have been lately.
GaaS titles need to launch with a baseline level of quality and polish. Splatoon is technically a service game with the way it received content updates over time. But the core gameplay was rock solid from day one. Developers are learning the hard way that GaaS doesn't mean "launch broken, and people will be patient."
What I understood back in the day when the term started cropping up was that any game that is changed at all after release is still in the GaaS definition.
Stardew Valley is GaaS even if "all it gets" is free updates and bugfixes for the rest of its life. The service is that the customer (and future customers) are getting updates.
But if that's the definition then we're really muddying things like games which have more opportunities for the player to pay real money, games which literally just output bugfixes after launch, early access titles, etc. I'm sure most people mean things like The Division and Assassin's Creed series when they say GaaS obviously.
Also, I don't feel confident evaluating whether a "GaaS Crash" is coming, although it really doesn't sound quite right, though I do feel people are on the money with the main issues coming from direct competition. But Gaas is certainly not a fad, not as I understand it.
On-Topic: Great article. I think that, even with all this information, people shouldn't be trying to pin blame only on one single entity. The problem seems systemic, and I really hope Bioware gets to the bottom of things. Also makes me very curious about the future of unionization.
