Even before the DEI woke bullshit infested gaming, I knew it was heading in the wrong direction win the late 2000's when gaming companies started treating their (expensive) physical products like disposable consoomer goods and stopped putting instruction manuals in their games, made the cases cheaper and flimsier (Ecoboxes were the worst and would actually crack the discs under normal usage over time), and then finally introduced Online Passes so if you bought the game used then you'd have to pay a fee to play online (in addition to already paying for XBL if you gamed on the 360). Even the cover art of games started becoming less artistic and creative and more corporate and boring.
I even seem to recall David Jaffe being a douchebag in a circa-2005 issue of EGM and talking about how used gaming is bad for the industry and how they're going to find ways to put an end to it.
These were the origins of the gaming industry treating their own customer base like shit and looking down on them. The woke infestation of gaming would happen a few short years later, in addition to all of the other problems we see today.
The gaming industry at that point were no longer appreciative of their own consumer base that made them rich. They actively looked down on them and would find new ways to treat them like shit and nickel and dime them depsite the products increasing in price. A few years later gaming" journalists" would start outright insulting gamers and say things like "gamers are dead" and even the losers on major gaming forums like NeoGAF and Resetera would parrot this garbage in an attempt to try to fit in and seem cool and "progressive", depsite being basement dwelling losers themselves.
It's gotten to the point where I haven't purchased a new game in a few years now, no matter how cheap it is. I always though that I would never finish my gaming backlog in my lifetime, but I've finally been making good progress on it because there's nothing decent new to play anymore. The old games are actually fun, creative, and complete experiences. Once I finish my backlog up I then anticipate retiring from gaming entirely. It used to be a fun and interesting hobby before greed, corporations, wokeism, normies, trannies, and other undesirables took over and destroyed this hobby. Even game collecting, a formerly cheap hobby, was ruined by Youtubers, Redditors, and other greedy asshole resellers who hoard classics games.
It's also sad to see how many "journalists" and gamers I knew in the past who would have been against this stuff happening now and spoke out against people like Jack Thompson (who seems harmless compared to the pieces of shit you have to deal with today) fully jumped on the woke bandwagon (censorship, leftist content being shoved in your games, calling you a racist or troll if you don't enjoy modern so-called "AAA games", etc.) in a sad attempt to finally try to be one of the "cool progressive" kids after being social outcasts who never fit in their entire lives.
