Majority of "development companies" are also shit poor and go bankrupt in after 1 or 2 projects even if they're moderately successful. Basically it's just hard to make profit in this industry and well over 90% of games never recouperate development costs.
Gamedev is just hard and there are very few exceptions like Epic or Rockstar that even get an option to become "greedy".
> are also shit poor and go bankrupt in after 1 or 2 projects even if they're moderately successful
Fair point, but those are clearly not the ones being pointed out as greedy by most people.
...except for maybe scrappy mobile companies that churn shitty microtransaction games looking for whales, but those are greedy indeed, and I doubt they have the sympathy of you or OP.
I personally not making mobile games or ones with microtransactions. Yet you can basically choose: either there will be microtransaction games for mobile or there will be none. This is not because of developers greed, but because it's the only way to monetize this audience. People voted with their wallet.
Microtransactions in PC games are there for the same reason - because you can't just go and sell your game for $25 if all of the competitors with similar production quality in last 5 years released for $15. Gamers simply wouldnt buy it and nobody care that with inflation $15 back then and $15 now are very different money.
Yet you can put microtransactions in the same $15 game and the same people will pay for them. And you'll reach desired $$$ of profit per copy sold. If everyone refused to pay for microtransactions and would spend more money on buying games without them instead there wouldn't be any microtransactions by now.
Not really. Most of these games are preying on weaknesses. These people are not voting with their wallets. They're being duped into giving away their mental health, and their wallet is taken away when they're not looking because of they're high in dopamine induced by images and sounds.
Gamedev is just hard and there are very few exceptions like Epic or Rockstar that even get an option to become "greedy".