They understand money and y’all sold out rather than remaining independent. Capitalists are narcissistic exploiters, they are sociopaths, they don’t feel emotions, and they especially don’t have empathy. So yes, they fundamentally don’t understand art. They understand people will pay for it.

The company trying to sell AI doesn’t understand art? Who could have seen this coming!

They don’t. They understand profit, which must increase year after year. Every business understands this. Every game company which started out small and passionate about art and gaming eventually got big and started putting profits ahead of the love of the game. Look at Valve, everyone likes to glaze them, but their company’s story is that they stopped making games once they realised they could just sell those of other companies. It’s not that Half-Life 3 and Portal 3 wouldn’t sell boatloads, it’s that the return on investment wouldn’t be as great as simply sitting back and selling stuff other people made. So why should they?

Make a game, lay off the staff. Hire them back when you want to make another game. It’s like people with Netflix, what they should do anyway. Pay for a month, binge a series, then cancel. You don’t need to keep the streaming service month after month. Same with GamePass, it isn’t adding any new games that are worth the price of the subscription. Watch the sales, buy games on deep discount (e.g. I got The Witcher 3 complete edition for about $10, and Saints Row IV + Saints Row: Gat Out of Hell for about $4… and Mass Effect Trilogy: Legendary Edition for $6 and Mass Effect: Andromeda for $4 — all of which totals the cost of one month of GamePass Ultimate, but provides many months of gaming), drop GamePass every now and then. Xbox is doing it to developers. Gamers need to do it to them. It’s gotta go both ways.

“Things rich people do that poor/working people have no idea of. Number four will shock you!”

oh no, they do. i’m sorry but as much as capitalism ruins everything it touches that includes people and gamers are people. too many folks falling for scams and cheats from these major publishers and they refuse to learn or change their purchasing habits. gaming companies wouldn’t be doing what they’re doing if it weren’t profitable. they’d be doing something else. so to them games are the most liquid form of money. they understand that games can impact someone so severely they can do whatever they want, basically. many of us have turned away from these businesses but not enough. art is irrelevant to gaming apparently. their numbers show it.