If there’s one thing that’s got the gaming faithful frothing at the mouth in 2025, it’s the suicidal corporate circus AAA studios are staging on a daily basis. These titans of the industry now treat their golden-age hits like toxic waste, shuttering servers, “remastering” classics into unrecognizable slop, and peddling half-baked “modern” cash-grabs just to squeeze one more dime from loyal fans. It’s not evolution; it’s self-sabotage on steroids, a blitzkrieg against their own legacy that leaves fans of these franchises pissed, and their reputations in the toilet. Imagine sinking hours into a timeless epic, only for the devs to nuke it from orbit in a different installment later on and demand you repurchase the corpse, polished with shitty dialogue tweaks and unnecessary additions.
Take Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, Square Enix’s bloated 2024 behemoth that promised to “honor” the 1997 legend but delivered a Frankenstein’s monster of cinematic diarrhea and dialogue gut-punches. Serious or ratty scenes are replaced with an over-the-top ritual involving bald people, and ominous sights are replaced with on-the-nose renditions that laugh at the viewer’s intelligence. Fans who asked for this remastered original certainly didn’t expect it to be butchered before their very eyes. Square Enix thought they’d hook the “new generation,” but all they did was alienate the die-hards who built the franchise. Oh, and they added a multiverse plot to the story too, so if there’s any question to the writer’s narrative bankruptcy, nothing confirms that more than hammering in yet another multiverse plot to an IP that doesn’t need it.
THE SELF-INFLICTED VAULTING
Flip to Bungie’s Destiny 2, the live-service leviathan that’s been feasting on vaulting old expansions since its 2017 launch. Remember Red War? Poof—gone forever, content locked behind sunsetting schedules because “sunsetting” became code for “monetize our new garbage.” Players grind for years, only to watch their investments evaporate, forced to pony up for nothingburger stories or the latest episodic slop. It’s not maintenance; it’s malice, a revolving door of FOMO-driven expansions. Bungie’s stock plummeted post-Sony acquisition, proving the vault isn’t just for guns—it’s their reputation too.
And don’t get me started on EA, the poster child for what is essentially ritual sacrifice. They’ve axed a laundry list of beloved titles: Darkspore, Dead Space remakes, Titanfall 3, yet prop up The Sims 4 like a zombie overlord. Launched in 2014 as a buggy mess, it’s been “expanded” into a Frankenstein of endless DLC packs (over 70 now, at $5-40 a pop), while the base game is like a skeletal husk of its previous rendition. Fans voice their dissent in the only forum that matters—Steam forums—while modders keep the dream alive. EA’s playbook: kill the old, milk the new.
This isn’t innovation; it’s a Ponzi scheme where yesterday’s triumphs fund tomorrow’s flops. Devs chase the “modern audience” dragon, live services, battle passes, always-online mandates, ignoring that gamers crave ownership, not rentals. The result? Trust eroded, communities fractured, and AAA’s aura dimmed to a flickering CRT glow.
TRIPPING OVER THEIR OWN SHOELACES
Now, zoom in on the hall of shame: studios that turned their inward cannibalism into an art form. Nintendo takes the crown for extreme measures, waging holy war on emulation while embalming their classic games with the same. Remember the Wii U and 3DS online shutdowns in 2024? Millions of hours in Mario Kart 8, Smash Bros., Pokémon, vaulted into digital oblivion, no backward compatibility, no cloud saves. If not for physical game cards or cartridges, a digital-only marketplace would’ve made these games permanently unplayable and lost to time forever.
They sue emulator devs like Yuzu into the ground, legally backhand fan-games, all while closing eShop stores to make purchasing older games impossible. Meanwhile they hawk $70 Switch 2 ports of buggy 20-year-old N64 sludge. The irony? Emulation thrives underground: Project M, Dolphin, because Big ‘Tendo sunsets faster than a bad speedrun. Fans pirate what they can’t preserve, and Nintendo’s “loyalty” rep sours into “litigious relic.”
It’s contagious. Ubisoft shutters Skull and Bones servers after its post-launch flop. Activision rotates Call of Duty seasons into irrelevance, all while AAA amateurs blame Valve’s effective storefront and beloved sales practices for their own bungles. “Waah, Steam is a monopoly!” they whine, tripping over their unnecessary and annoying launchers they hamfist into their games, forcing Denuvo DRM onto games that don’t need it, and day-one patches that brick GPUs. Steam’s crime? A simple, effective, independent business model. These clowns lambast the platform while their own “platforms” (hamfisted launcher requirements) crash harder than a noob in Dark Souls, self-own after self-own, eroding the very market they aim to dominate.
DIGGING OUT OF THE VAULT
So, what’s the escape hatch from this self-made hell? Simple: claw back to customer-first basics, ditch the malice, and remember why we boot up. Sensible practices like permanent ownership, no more vaulting expansions, no random fucking price hikes, no always-online bullshit.
Malicious monetization? Torch it. Battle passes? Fine, if cosmetic-only and earnable gratis. No paywalls on story beats, no $20 skins pay-to-win. In-game ads? Sacrilege—nuke ‘em. Get rid of ‘em. This isn’t mobile. Look at Helldivers 2’s stratagem model: premium warbonds packed with value, no FOMO grind.
Indies nail it: Hades 2, Balatro, and Vampire Survivors—all full games with fair prices, eternal access thanks to Steam. AAA could learn: release polished (literally just beta-test your games), support post-launch sans greed, induce a post-closure preservation plan without the need for any always-online servers.
This rot’s reversible if these studios stop losing to themselves. Gamers aren’t ATMs; we’re the lifeblood. Deliver fun games, fairly, without the bullshit, and without the hypocritical bureaucratic excuses for their permanent closure, and watch those reputations return to form.
SARJ OUT
