This. I’ll be the last one to defend any of these megacorps but folks calling it greed are being reductive. These are publicly traded companies which means their loyalty is to their shareholders and their #1 goal is to make them more money than they made them last quarter. So it’s more than greed, it’s their job within this capitalist system. They have to do that every quarter for as long as they exist. The only ways to do it are to increase revenue or decrease costs. If they can’t make enough money they have to fire people. That’s the world we’ve built.

But it’s not only about making more profit than last quarter, but also the amount the profits increased by has to be higher than the amount they increased by the quarter before last. That’s how you end up with companies seeing record profits and still laying people off. They made more than last quarter, but only 2% more. The quarter before they made 3% more so now people have to go. It’s insane.

The FTC Bukkakes Microsoft Over Activision Blizzard layoffs

CoD is the shoveled GaaS nonsense, and “everything we publish day one” has basically been their promise to subscribers from the start.

That’s the part that gets me with CoD. They make so much money on the backend from MTX and season passes that making it F2P via gamepass doesn’t seem like a financially risky move. And it could net them more over time than what they get from asking people to pay $70 up front on top of everything else.

But I’m guessing that with gamepass falling short of expectations they need to hedge their bets to help make the ABK acquisition worthwhile. It also explains them opening up more games to up front purchasers on PS and Switch. This is MS getting defensive after missing the jackpot on some pretty big bets.

? GOG is a drm free storefront. Doesn’t have anything to do with the age of the game. Plenty of new releases launch on gog alongside steam/egs/Ms