One major issue I have is that I think the way you 'ought' make money is to make a product that you believe to be good, and put it out there. And for many years, this was the model with video games. But in the last decade or two publishers have MBA'd games. It's design by focus group, selling games piecemeal through DLC that would previously have been a part of the core experience, annoying or otherwise coercing players into buying DLC instead of creating stuff people want to buy, stripping out all but the most bare essentials of a game, rushing products out the door prematurely, etc.

And then in terms of what's published they always chase whatever's trending obsessively and generally singularly. Minecraft is the most profitable game ever made in in terms of revenue / costs. But it's something that likely would have never been picked up by a mainstream publisher. No story, no graphics, no dlc, free updates, and you just kind of play with blocks..? Notch would have been laughed out of any publisher's office. It's now the best selling game of all time, behind only tetris. Apparently we like blocks. Then he gets bought up by a big publisher and they start marketing Minecraft 4k, as in 4k resolution... I seriously thought that was a meme or a joke the first time I saw it. Just emphasizes how irredeemably out of touch these publishers tend to be.

And then there is what publishers do to the studios they acquire. When EA buys a studio it's as good as signing its death certificate. I have absolutely no understanding of why this is. It makes no economic sense at all to spend substantial sums of money to buy a studio only to completely kill it off, but it happens over and over and over. And it's no acquihires, they tend to lose most of the premium talent. But the list of studios killed off by EA alone is just completely tragic: Maxis, Mythic, Bullfrog, Origin, Westwood, Phenomic, Pandemic, etc..

Do publishers have influence over monetization strategies? Are they typically the ones asking for gimmicks like loot boxes? I have heard mixed things on this, but had the impression that the development studio generally dislikes these mechanics, and publishers generally force them to include them.

A game development company should have publisher as a service not the other way around. publishers pushing game companies to monetise more heavily is a plague on our times

Like the sibling comment, it’s about how people ought to make money. I completely understand why we have publishers. But I think it’s easy enough to proliferate content now that I really really hope more studios can be successful self-distributing. It keep prices low and quality high.

I was really looking forward to Call of Duty 21 and (sport) (year)