> It's already a race to the bottom. It has been for a while.
Is it? Undoubtedly there's exploitative crap on PC, but there are countless great titles -- indie and otherwise -- released every year that you can pay money to own. On my iPhone I can hardly even find games to pay a fair price once to own anymore; it's almost entirely exploitative crap.
I used to buy games all the time on my iPhone; were it not for Apple Arcade I'd've hardly played anything in years.
Yes, commercial games have been a race to the bottom for a long time.
In spaces where casual gaming dominates - exploitative games are top of the "charts".
I'm not an enthusiast gamer - I don't have time to search for indie games. What I see is primarily exploitative games, which turned me off gaming.
If you even read about gaming industry or new games - you're not the majority , that drives casual games to the top of the charts in primary app stores.
Still not sure I buy it. Where are these spaces where exploitative games are top of the charts? It's not in the major PC game storefronts, for example (at least not in my experience). Steam is very good at recommending decent non-exploitative games to me right on its landing page. Same with Epic; even its prominent free games are generally non-exploitative. Game Pass is popular and also recommends a mix of very good games without having to search.
Regardless, my point isn't that there aren't spaces where exploitative games predominate. My point is that so many actual good games exist that aren't the slightest bit difficult to find, whereas my experience on the iPhone has been almost uniformly negative the past few years. On average, people just aren't willing to lay out ten, fifteen bucks for a game on mobile, so the race to the bottom is real.
Do you have to be an enthusiast gamer to find good PC games? Just google "best PC games", the first hit is a decent list from PC gamer. Takes all of 60 seconds to search and skim the list. If you don't have time for that, then you don't have time to be gaming at all. If I google "best iOS games" I see a mix of exploitative crap and games that are years and years old by now. (A list of "best iOS games 2021" that includes Bastion -- a game I was playing on my phone ten years ago -- is criminal.)
Is it? Undoubtedly there's exploitative crap on PC, but there are countless great titles -- indie and otherwise -- released every year that you can pay money to own. On my iPhone I can hardly even find games to pay a fair price once to own anymore; it's almost entirely exploitative crap.
I used to buy games all the time on my iPhone; were it not for Apple Arcade I'd've hardly played anything in years.