"Games as a service" is an inevitable consequence of rising development costs. If the price of a single game sold stays pretty much the same throughout the decades, companies had to look for other ways to keep afloat. This does not excuse EA but it's hardly pure greed in definition.
Wokeism and mob-virtue pandering has no place in this world, that much I agree.
I get that, but some of these companies really are just greedy, the story I read with Amy Henning and EA was she showed off Ragtag, which if you've seen the leaked footage, looked jaw dropping, to some EA exec and all he had to say "FIFA makes us X amount of money a year, where's your version of that?" as if EA, with all their sports game money, couldn't have funded Ragtag and eaten the cost even if it flopped (which it wouldn't have), that's just greed and plain and simple.
If you compare it to Hollywood and I know times have changed recently, but I'm just talking historically, Hollywood, being an older industry, cared about "prestige", ie winning Oscars, all the major studios would release "tentpole" pictures but they would also release "Oscar bait" pictures.
Meanwhile the video game industry does not give a single shit about the "artistic" side of video games, your companies like EA and Activision aren't releasing "Oscar bait" equivalent even though they absolutely could, they just don't care.
Sony is the only AAA publisher that cares about this, of course now we've run into the trouble of Wokeness, where people that do try to make "Oscar bait" equivalent games, the only thing they really have to say is "FUCK YOU GAMERGATE!" and that's it, it's not art.
But putting aside that issue and focusing on the rising cost of game development I'd be fine with new releases going up to 80$ if it meant better games and you'd actually save money in the long run if there was no "games as a service" spending.
I think one big factor though wasn't just the rising cost of development but the used games market, GameStop essentially becoming parasitical and selling brand new games as "used" just to cut the publishers and developers out of money, games probably could have stayed 60$ with no nickel and diming online costs if people consistently bought games new or at least waited a while before buying them used.
Remember when he flexed on Twitter about firing a QA guy because he dared make a joke about one of his female characters?
What's weird is he wasn't always so super Woke, some of the Woke elements of Uncharted 4 we're thanks to some unnamed (but I'm sure she had dyed hair) female developer suggesting characters arbitrarily be changed to female just because, originally that old woman was supposed to be an old British male explorer which makes more sense given that trope and originally it was going to be
Nathan's son instead of his daughter.
I assume that's why TLOU1 was good and Uncharted 4 was still good despite some flaws, but somewhere along the way the dude fully drank the Kool Aid and it's not hard to guess what the catalyst was, I'm sure it was the election of Donald Trump that made the dude lose his mind as it did for so many people.
I wonder what the original, pre-election story for TLOU2 was.