>>719137052
I've only ever understood it as free advertising and community or fan(atic) building.
I'm the kind of consumer who looks up the first 5-10 minutes of gameplay and decides a hefty No in most cases (current games suck so fucking much) but I used to be a child who bought what was ye olde let's player slop because a youtuber I liked played it and pretended it was fun.

Look at image related. It only made money thanks to streamers and children buying it who then didn't play it.

>Same reason why you cant just upload a movie to YouTube
Aren't there channels like MovieClips that just uploads the core scenes + finale to youtube? Did the big publishers ever bully google into destroying that?
It's a hollow experience to watch films like that but it genuinely does what your'e saying about watching a playthrough instead of buying the product.