Welcome to capitalism :). The industry didn't change, it's still on the same trajectory of optimizing for profit. Getting ahead by making games more fun, and then making them prettier, were the lower-hanging fruits. We're past those indirect methods now - at this point, more direct methods of optimizing for profit are being applied.

This seems to be a pattern I see in every industry, and with every product. Whenever a market is created, things improve up to some point, and after that they degrade. I wish there was a way to stop this evolution at the peak of quality, before the decay and customer abuse takes hold.