Same here.
I will never get the importance or the need to be able to reach people or to be reachable at all times, wherever you are.
Of course that's not the main reason behind having a mobile phone anymore these days, but still...

Well, I also live in a dead zone, which has something to do with it. :P

Actually, with this particular example you are wrong. In latest AC DLC Ubi fucked up not the customers, but social activists. And that's why Ubi made amends, so to pertain a "progressive" public image. EA did the same thing with ME: Andromeda. They made a patch adding LGBT characters to please critics who complained about their absence, while all issues that regular players were concerned about were left untouched.

Yep, and I don't want to be reachable at all times anyway. I just wish there was a dumb phone with a bit of smart (aka browser for web access if I ever need it).

Frankly, who gives a shit. These companies have to respond to their greedy, parasitic and dead flash-eating "shareholders", not to players.

So really: who - gives - a shit. Stop wasting your time on worthless stuff. And nowadays the AAA gaming market is mostly worthless, imo.

^This.

I couldn't agree more and have a general disdain for the gaming industry as a whole, given the way things are these days.

Fortunately, there are plenty of older games I still enjoy, along with a few (too few, unfortunately) indie developers who have earned my trust, from whom I'll still buy games that are of interest to me.

Before buying anything nowadays, I do my research, reading plenty of user reviews and feedback before parting with my hard-earned cash. Long gone are the days I'd pre-order games, or buy day one releases.

tbh its only activision who suck blizzard games do not contain that many micro transactions compared to activisions black ops 4 and other game companys such as EA wh oseem to put lootboxes in every damn franchise they get there hands on

Never.
AAA Publishers don't release games on GOG that require their own Launcher.
Only Ubisoft even does it with Steam (Now Epic), but only if they require Uplay, as well.
AS Uplay also requires DRM, GOG will never accept those terms.

Simple fact is AAA Publishers releasing on GOG, is getting rarer, and less likely.
These forced Publisher store clients, are the worst thing ever, and I'm not talking about the DRM.

I'd rather have DRM, and no store client, than a DRM free client like Galaxy.
At least GOG gives me the choice.

As someones bound to mention multi-player games requiring Galaxy.
That's really the devs fault, and almost entirely due to the fact those games used Steam as their net code.
Without Galaxy providing the same service, those games wouldn't even be on GOG.
I don't even touch any Multi-player modes of SPGs, so have never needed to use Galaxy.

Ouch
(Activision Blizzard Mass Layoffs Will Leave Hundreds Jobless After Slow Sales, According to Report - YongYea)

While I'm sorry for everyone loosing her/his job (which are most likely all the wrong ones as usual) I have no sympathy for the company entity itself it turned into.

Activision decided to put Destiny DLC on the disc and sell it to me hoping I'd purchase the dlc later while I already purchased it, Capcom too. Capcom also decides to place only a limited amount of Mega Man games on a Nintendo Switch card, putting the rest as Download codes, destroying resell-ability and enforcing DRM. Companies put DRM into their software which has caused me to lose access to legitimate games I have purchased and when servers go down, they don't really care to fix them. Time and time again, in this exchange of goods, I'm the one they attempt to treat like rubbish, so I can understand the toxicity towards the scumbags. Last game I purchased from Activision since Destiny was Crash Bandicoot trilogy and possibily Crash racing, looks like they tried that download thing with Spyro.

The games industry feels more like exploitation than it did before, and if it wasn't for GoG and Nintendo, I would be out.
Then they synthesize them, where the client and DRM become one. Why pay Denuvo when your own client can be a DRM for the same price as a store front.

I despise your ilk of hating on AAA gaming.

AAA gaming is still better then most of the garbage coming out of indie games.

"Massive Hit For Blizzard & Activision! Hundreds FIRED! Mass Layoffs Start Monday"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUiqOeFSaes

You're welcome to your view, of course, although I clearly added that I "have a general disdain for the gaming industry as a whole" - which goes beyond just AAA gaming. That includes indie games too, as I mentioned, save for a small number of developers.

Call it a lack of "consumer confidence" in the gaming industry in general, whichever way you want to label each sector and whether that's "AAA" or "indie" gaming. I'm no longer willing to open my wallet for poor quality, or rushed releases for which I end up feeling like I'm paying for the privilege of beta testing an unfinished product; if it works at all that is.

If more people thought that way, perhaps the industry might change for the better. Perhaps more people are thinking that way already, voting with their wallets and refusing to keep getting stung time after time and wising up, which is why profits are tanking at some of the bigger publishers.

Another gripe, particularly as more and more developers are gobbled up by behemoth publishers, is how games themselves are produced and developed. I look at the credits for lots of older games, the studio leads were usually experienced developers, artists and coders, part of the creative team with a background of working on games. Nowadays they increasingly seem to be marketing people or accountants, instead, which must be frustrating for talented developers working beneath them.

I think I'll leave it at that now, because I'm starting to sound like my parents talking about music, and not the "modern shite" I was listening too in the 90s. :)