I wish I could blame it all on these kinds of people. In reality it’s about 60% of the story or so. They’ve always been around but they weren’t this bold a decade ago.

A small part is the political climate over the last decade. That’s a topic worth its own encyclopedia one day, and games is affected as well.

A large part is that games just isn’t doing well financially right now. Because everyone in tech wants to invest in AI so there’s a lot less money in the space. Smaller or medium sized teams can’t get funding and less pitches get approved. Larger studios are “fine” but companies are using this time to cash out. Which is why you hear about Activision selling out to Microsoft and EA to Saudi Arabia. Layoffs at small companies happen because they need to (or companies simply shut down) , layoffs at large companies happen to make the number go up.

Last decent chunk of the problem is the landscape of games is changing. Converging more on “forever games” rather than traditional console experiences. This is an emerging problem that will get worse over the coming years, something even the consoles themselves are trying to shape itself around.