Talk about entitled. Freemium exists because of piracy. Why blame the video game industry for something caused by criminals. Developers need to eat too.
what horse-shit, let's see the numbers.
my personal take : freemium exists because the video game industry figured out to exploit the gambling bugs in the human psyche to leverage them to gain even further profit.
If piracy killed gaming so badly, how are the market numbers represented from now (when piracy is rampant and distribution is easy) from then (let's say the 80s or early 90s when distribution was near impossible and DRM wasn't needed as physical copying was prohibitive enough?)
Gee, a quick search shows me that the video game industry is bigger than it ever has been, and the growth hasn't ever plateau'd. In fact, if the industry was in danger from piracy destroying all revenue it'd be easy to show me the dip where freemium tactics began to help the recovery -- can you point that dip out to me?
I haven't been able to find that dip.
Hypothesis : the adoption of freemium tactics had nothing to do with loss-of-sales revenue and everything to do with increasing profits.
Piracy has existed as long as games have and continues to this day, and yet FOR SOME REASON, gaming (not the casino kind) is the most profitable entertainment industry in the world at this time.
Want to know the truth? Only poor people pirate (just like any criminal, you usually have to be poor to be motivated to be a bad actor), so the vast majority are not actually lost sales. As soon as game lovers get some cash, they throw down to get the games they want.
And not only poor people pirate, or commit any crime in general. It works in reverse. Activities by poor people, that rich people don't appreciate, is what our society labels 'crime'. When rich people commit unwanted activities, it is called 'privilege'. There is a reason poor people are incarcerated in prisons, whereas rich people are fined for their transgressions. I have yet to hear of more than a single person (a swiss guy) going to jail for what transpired in 2007 and 2008. If anybody got in prison for that in 2008, it was the victims. I too hate what modern games have become. And I hate that I used to be able to buy movies as perpetual DVDs, but that big business privilege in the intervening 20 years have changed the laws into "you have a right to RENT movies from us".