That's not how this market works. There is no homogenous group of gamers that can act together. Each year there is a new cohort of 11 years old that knows nothing of past publisher behaviour and wants the latest EA game for their birthday. For FIFA with the lootboxes etc there is the added factor that people buying those are for a big part a distinct group to other gamers, there are many guys that only play FIFA or their favorite sport game and nothing else. So bad behaviour in that area does not affect other game sales as much as it should.
For certain genres and certain games, no amount of negative reviews seems to have any effect on their popularity. I've seen many cases where, on Steam at least, the reviews for a game can be mostly negative, or mixed at best, yet the number of reviews keeps going up like crazy. Meanwhile some very positive and occasionally overwhelmingly positive games can have fewer total reviews a year after release than some poorly reviewed games get in a day.
There's also still an "early access" stigma even though must major publishers are basically treating "full" release day as an open beta test now.
All of this to say that careful consumers can only affect a small proportion of the games industry's revenue. It's enough to keep indie games and their small studios alive but so far it has had near zero effect on the AAAs. I suspect the layoffs we're seeing across the industry reflect a contraction in the spending of the majority segment but a lot of AAAs seem to be doubling down on targeting that same segment.
This makes me so mad. Every time I have to show my nieces or nephews how to play a game, and I have to show them all the fake buttons they have to avoid to manage to play it through the dark patterns. Even Windows, the OS, is full of traps now. You can't buy any software and have it pretend to be yours anymore.
Used to be the case for free mobile games at first, now it's everywhere.
Just to say: This is avoidable. Ofc one can not give Windows to a child anymore, but there is Linux. For games on Android, of course one can't install games from the Play Store anymore, but there is F-Droid. And for regular PC games, there is still a big selection that works without or with very little micro transactions. And besides, the kids system should not be capable to make any purchases no matter where they click.
But I can completely relate that it is infuriating and that it takes a lot of filtering through the mainstream shit to manage this well.
Proprietary/popular games on Linux come with the same monetization strategy on every platform. You want to play Fortnite, you get the Fortnite ads/loot boxes/nudges even on Linux (plus you'll get banned by anti-cheat quick).
Linux is not the recommended choice for the game selection, it's so that the OS is not already a hostile place with ads and spammy news. The games themselves have still to be filtered, as I wrote.
That's what I use myself, but I can't really recommend it to family overseas... And even that is not safe, this will probably be the last Ubuntu release I can use before the "Ubuntu Pro", Snaps, and other integrations become unbearable.
In the same manner one can avoid many bad aspects of modern cars if they are an experienced mechanic and can build their own, but that's not a reasonable burden for an average person.
Feels a bit absurd to try to lay the blame at the feet of 11 year olds, when adults routinely demonstrate the same behavior.
The latest example of KSP2 is imo a great example, announced in 2019 for release in 2020, delayed several times to go on to launch into a $50 'early access' early last year with far less functionality than the original game and worse bugs and architectural issues. Despite all the glaring warning signs, so many people ate up the promises. They delivered one basic feature in 6 months (reentry heating). Yet the 'trust' from otherwise smart adults remained. It seems they only finally noticed this past week, when the studio making the game was shut down. Now they expect refunds despite all the warnings Steam has against buying early access games based on future promises.
