Oh boy, there's missing the bus and then there's this ☝️

If you were to rank everyone to blame for the state of games at release these days, there are so many people that come before Sean Murray. First and foremost, is YOU. Not necessarily you or even only you, but the consumer. I haven't preordered a game since standing in line at GameStop for Halo fucking 2. It was immediately obvious how stupid that was back then, and it makes nearly no sense these days. Some people want to support a dev and that's great, but others just slap their money down on a preorder for a digital release from some soon to be defunct EA studio. You created a precedent for games to be sold before they are even made.

Which brings me to number two, the studio conglomerates like EA, predatory confidence games like console exclusivity, and general anti-consumer practices. Hell, capitalism itself incentivises every studio to make their own store, lock every asset behind a paywall, and make the game progression as needlessly grindy and time-consuming as possible.

You think Sean Murray masterminded the debacle himself? Watch his videos from during that time. He is incredibly awkward because he is a dev. He's not a salesman or a marketing director. What dev do you know that doesn't dream about what their game could be? And sure, the debacle is ultimately Sean's responsibility, but he has gone above and beyond to make up for it. To blame him for "games these days" that fail to do that in any meaningful way is just so transparently ignorant.