While I don't disagree with the general sentiment, it is important to note that price per amount of content has gone up. On the example of Bioware - Baldur's Gate 2 had, iirc, around 1,200,000 words, but 99% of it was text. That was 1999 roughly. When they released first Dragon Age (which was considered somewhat old school even at the time of release) it was full VO with about 600,000 words. Of course, that was much, much, muuuuuuuch more expensive than 1,200,000 words in BG2. It is simply insanely more expensive to make X amount of content now than it was 10, 20, 30... years ago. <br>That doesn't excuse loot boxes, shady practices and such but it is true that developers are investing a lot more money in games than they used to. Heck, 20 years ago any game with over 1m would AAA basically.  Wing Commander IV cost 6M (developing and marketing) to make in 1996, and that was considered unimaginable in the industry at the time. Now, AAA titles cost more than 50M easily, going upward to 100 or even 200m before accounting for marketing