honestly, i'm getting tired of board members of corporations just making shitty decisions to try and squeeze more money out of their customers rather than trying to learn what about their product appeals to their customer base in the first place. notice how it's never enough to look at revenue over the years and say, "this is enough, let's keep this steady."
I’d even be fine with a bit of increase. Have to keep pace with inflation, make sure you’re making enough to keep all your workers’ wages worth the same this year as it was last year.
But they want MORE profit NOW NOW NOW at a much higher rate than needed to keep pace with inflation, and the money sure isn’t going to workers to keep their wages at pace with inflation.
They said kids who failed the marshmallow test (eat one marshmallow now or wait and get two? basically, a test of if you can do delayed gratification or not) were less likely to fail than kids who passed it. But it looks like the instant gratification MORE PROFIT NOW NOW NOW guys are winning. But only if you’re super rich.
The fact that they even tried to pretend it wasn't retroactive because they didn't charge for old install counts. Like, does it charge games that were released under different terms? Yes? Then it's retroactive!
Companies aren't run to earn profit based on goods and services generated anymore. They are investment vehicles for wealthy VC to use and abuse until they run them into the ground while they jump to the next disposable company. Someday this will result in no effective company existing anymore, but the investors don't care.
If governments were actually functioning they'd recognize this danger and crack down on this behavior because it weakens the country as a whole, but most of the politicians are already bought and paid for.
That's just the system. This is what happens when people confuse commerce with capitalism: They think that capitalism is being rewarded for doing commerce better. Instead, capitalism is about leveraging ownership of property and underpaying workers in order to get money for free.
And the thing about money is that it's really just a proxy for power. When you only have enough of it to eek out a comfortable life (or less), you don't really notice, because all of your power goes in to achieving or maintaining that acceptably good life (or hanging on for dear life trying to survive), but once your needs are comfortably and handidly met, money is entirely about being able to make other people do whatever you want. And the more money you have, the more things you can get them to do, or the more of them that you can get to do what you want.
And if you've managed to be one of the lucky ones who just get free money for owning shit, then you have the power at your fingertips to try to grow your power over others exponentially, while still doing no honest work in your days. And if you're a shitty person who gets off on all of this, that's exactly what you'll do.
The wealthy are insufferably greedy leeching assholes because one does not become wealthy without being greedy, leeching off of others, and being an insufferable asshole.