What this rant is saying is basically that
competition is better and cheaper, it's so unfair.
It's the same deal as wallmart moving into town and driving all the mom&pop shops downtown out of business.
The result is the concentration of power - it is already almost impossible (baring a handful of outliers) to make a successful indie game without going through steam (and giving valve their 30-40% cut).
Would you approve of a 10% tax on groceries for the poor? Because that's essentially what you're calling for when you call out WalMart.
I suppose it's easy to bitch about the "king-makers" when your own little barony is disrupted.
Just saying it's not all good either, and that unlike walmart I rarely see any possible negative effect discussed.
Remember that games compete with a whole world of stuff out there that's not on your phone or computer or game console. When people aren't playing video games, it's because they're doing something else that they chose to do, such as going to work, out to a restaurant, on a hike, for a drive, kayaking, listening to a recorded lecture, making dinner at home, etc. For all of recorded history, up until the last 35 years or so, people didn't play video games. You're not up against a company that's trying to keep you down: you're up against the actual desires of every single person that would never buy your product, even if they were somehow made fully aware of its existence.
It might be hard for you to imagine that the game you work on will never be important to a huge number of people, but you have to get over it. No one owes anyone else a living, no matter who they are, or how much they need it. Anything less means enslaving at least one person, to some degree, to the will of another.
^In the long term, what someone wants ultimately stems from ideas a person chooses to hold, which they apply in the course of dealing with the environment around them.
I believe there's a range in between the 0.99$ Pacman on Android and the 70$+ new Assasin's Creed. I believe that a dedicated team of indie developers could pull-off a a modern game worth of that price range.
It might be hard for you to imagine that the
game you work on will never be important to
a huge number of people, but you have to get
over it. No one owes anyone else a living,
no matter who they are, or how much they need
it.
My last game is still paying my bills and was played by more than half a million people.
I understand the price drop is not proportional to the cost decrease, but that's not even important.
The people behind Steam or Humble Bundle are showing great creativity and forward thinking, creating viable businesses (if we can call Humble Bundle a business) by selling 1-2$ games.
What this rant is saying is basically that competition is better and cheaper, it's so unfair.
Saying that indie games used to sell for 10-15$ does not make it better. It was viable 5 years ago, it's not anymore. Period. Prices of blank DVDs have dropped drastically in the past years. You don't hear DVD manufacturers complain about the price-drop or make claims about the 'industry'.
I understand that the author is raising an otherwise rarely discussed issue. I apologize for the harsh tone of my comment, but globally, the message is the same: Stop nagging and do things differently. Your competitors understood that and are moving on!