So, the hammer finally falls. How sad.
Sic transit, etc.
@C-Nymph has well summarised the inevitable and predictable trajectory of almost any originally PC-based video game which elects to shift its focus to the vastly different world of mobile 'gaming' ~ a term which barely even applies in the case of 95% or more of the, er, products offered within that sphere.
Some years ago, I read a gaming industry statistic indicating that Game X, within any genre, will earn an average of 5 times more revenue on mobile than on PC. Excellent news for corporations whose main or sole priority is shareholder profit. Not such good news for talented game developers, who incidentally have my every sympathy in the present case, nor of course for players who prefer to
play games, rather than to
pay for [renting] 'game services', as mobile games are frequently described in their legal user agreements.
One aspect of this sorry débacle which is perhaps less often discussed is the fact that many mobile 'games' are now merely frameworks which exist solely to serve advertising (typically promoting other 'games') and/or to keep people online for as long as possible while background software harvests, and often then sells, their personal data.
In some cases this provides notably more revenue even than the increasingly costly and prevalent in-game microtransactions which infest most mobile games, or their weekly/monthly subscriptions, recurring paid 'Event passes', etc. ~ and more so, too, now that a major part of all user activity on all mobile devices, in games or in any other activity, is used, covertly or openly, in the large-scale training of AI software owned by private entities, especially Large Language Models such as ChatGPT. Even Microsoft's Bing search engine is getting in on
that act.
Discord is well known to be one of the most egregious data-farming offenders, particularly via its [poorly] recently re-designed and counter-intuitive mobile version, being now little more than a thinly disguised form of Anti-Social Meeja, about which unpleasant realm nothing really needs to be said, IMO.
And finally, just to add another point, too, to the already disturbing list of Discord hazards provided above by
@m4rt1n : you won't find this openly stated on the type of website which our friend (and core enabler of the Internet data farming dystopia), Google, will admit to its top 100 search results, but Discord has also become one of the go-to hang-outs of persons and organisations responsible for generating and disseminating illegal pornography and similarly obnoxious material.
Truly, this is a triumph of greed and moral bankruptcy over
all else on Inno's behalf, although I rather suspect that MTG, Inno's owner and a far larger corporate player, is very probably the ultimate source of the decision.
Needless to say, I won't be joining the Discord Brave New... venture.
Goodbye, good health, and good luck, to all who know me here. It's been fun.
~ Laurelin... the Disappointed. Very.
