I've always wondered how healthier the game industry would be if the loot-box boom of the mid-10s had never happened, it always felt like even then that it caused a massive ballooning in growth (partly through the exploitation of "whales", many of which were Children, people with gambling issue or addictive personalities) that was a long term dagger for the industry because their was no way to sustain and pushed the ceiling way too high. I remember when Acitivision announced they made like $2 billion after Overwatch's 1 launch, fanboys cheered for it despite the fact it was clear that meant companies like Acti-Blizz were going to push harder and harder to make sure those profits got higher.
Was it ultimately inevitable given how much that shit had rotted the mobile market and no would the AAA ignore that kind of money?
And that's not even going into the preservation issue, just how much of gaming will still be able to be preserved and properly achieved when these game finally enter the public domain over a century from now, will most of today's game become lost media, unplayable, the masters gone (like so many classics from Sega, Square etc)? Hell this isn't talking about solely online games, even for ones playable offline, will these game even be able played in their complete states due to the use of guests characters, we already see the issue with licences with games like the Capcom AVP and MvC series.
