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3 months agoI’ll disagree very slightly.
It’s not that buggy games didn’t exist in the past. It’s the buggy games failed a lot harder in the past. There was tons and tons of garbage. Lots of people ended up with a piece of shovelware that grandma bought from the bargain bin at the local game store for Christmas. It’s just that back that the scam was more stealing out of the pockets of publishers than the general audiences, since those types of games were typically sold to the publisher outright back in the day, rather than having a dev split.
It’s the ultimate push to turn everything into the perfect Capitalist (not market-oriented) business solution: Getting paid for nothing
If your goal is to accumulate capital, and there are not outside forces regulating your worst impulses, you ultimately will create a class of legal-protected thieves, since the absolutely best and most risk free way to accumulate capital is to be given it in exchange for quite literally nothing.
Gambling is about as close to the platonic ideal as you can, but conquest by military force of political capture is also a very, viable route. Use the law to force people to buy your nothing and be protected for it, rather than being lynched when you steal someone’s products.