>>717152735
Pretty much. The industry is so totally consolidated and centralized where individual studios lack any control, direction or ambition. And this is encouraged by the big publishers as it's how they maintain control for their real products: mobile games, which is where most of the money is made. All the non-mobile gaming stuff is considered ancillary to their main business of introducing children to gacha gambling.

It will continue until more US states and Europe enact stronger laws regarding microtransactions, simulated gambling and gambling itself. This will happen soon, the hard porn bans in America and soft porn bans in Europe are the first step. The next step after ID Verification is to ban all minors under 21 from lootboxes and algorithmic-generated content, and to limit the amount of tokens someone can buy. Visa/Mastercard are already working on the latter because so much WoW money, Steam credit etc is used to deal drugs and avoid US sanctions.

The end is coming. We're still in the initial stages, but momentum will increase as more normies demand harder payment rules.