layoffs, studio closures, forced account creations, lawsuits over dumb shit. These past 5 months have exposed how disgusting corporations are. They are the single biggest thing ruining the fucking hobby. I sincerely wish they'd all crumble into massive piles of dust and all those higherups to lose all their fucking money.
Best case scenario, you get to publish your product with compromises and splotches mandated by the greedy publisher, and they keep the rights to your IP to do whatever with it they wish.
Worst case scenario, You can make a transcendental masterpiece that's gaming's equivalent to the godfather, the great gatsby, Star Wars, and Shakespeare and they will throw it, you and your team in the dumpster because it didn't sell enough units or make enough money. And that's assuming they didn't handicap the potential revenue your product could generate by strapping it to some bung subscription service- if they did you may as well already kick the bucket.
They serve hardly any purpose, the studios do all the work, and even then they get spat on and stomped on, and we suffer as players too due to less games being made.