I guess I should have added "no longer works on mobile". PCs/Consoles have plenty of good, paid-upfront games.

I never got much into mobile gaming, but have recently been having a lot of fun playing PC or console games on my phone (using a controller) with streaming services. I've played with both Geforce Now and Xbox Game Pass and (at home on my decent cable internet connection) it's working really nicely. I also have the Nvidia shield, so when I do want to game on the TV I can pick up where I left off very easily.

If you're looking for a game to play on your commute it's probably not going to work, but for at home on the couch it's great.

My phone runs games up to ~PS2 in emulation, FWIW.

Ah right, I don't play games on mobile, but I think there are still mobile games with simple straight-forward pricing models. For example the Baldur's Gate series got released on mobile (already a few years ago), and Wadjet Eye Games releases most of their adventures on mobile too I think. There are undoubtedly others.

But I guess they're harder to find/more rare. As others mentioned, most people spend nothing to little on these "free" games, so as a no-spend gamer you can choose between 1) free, or 2) pay $10 (or whatever they charge) to play a game. Not necessarily a hard choice if the "free" game is "entertaining enough".

Diablo 4 will probably just be a normal PC game too. Those freemium mobile games are always scammy but that doesn't mean there aren't endless classic business model games.

A publisher that has tasted fast cheap low value entries has a hard time justifying risky quality entries when the risk of failure is much higher. We're seeing the reality-tv moment in video games with mobile freemiums and it's frightening. I feel like Square-Enix is the perfect nexus if these market forces. I'm not even sure they'll bother with AAAs after making so much money off their low effort mobile cash cows.

Not only that, but many studios are one bad selling title away from closing up permanently. They can't afford to take risks. Check out "Press Reset" by Jason Schreier for multiple examples.

At least sqeenix just sold off a number of their studios and franchises so at least someone else can still make good games with them.

Perhaps.

I still plays Diablo 2 and 3 quite a bit. I don’t think I’d call myself a “hardcore” player — I’m not very good — but I’m definitely in the Diablo 4 launch demographic.

I’ve been keeping an eye on Diablo Immortal as sort of a canary. I can say with absolute confidence that I won’t be buying D4 at launch if Blizzard doesn’t fix the DI mess.

Among longtime players of the franchise, I can’t imagine that I’m alone.

“ It is so sad that "make good game, sell it" model no longer works.” What makes you say that? I mostly play single-player games”

it doesn’t work for the developers. obviously you can play a single player video game.