No Man’s Sky was much more lacking at release compared to how they sold the game. And they basically went radio silent for quite a long time.

I don’t see how the two situations are similar.

And No Man’s Sky isn’t that much better now anyways.

Also most quests are just “talk to npc, use Batman Vision to follow a trail, kill enemy, return”

This applies to a lot of games, even Witcher 3.

Without being a gacha game, World of WarCraft is guilty of a lot of the same stuff.

I’m not a fan of trying to poison the well on this discussion by trying to bring in a lot of secondary issues and try to broaden the issue to the point of uselessness.

The biggest issue with gambling is the ability to lose your money.

Sure, you can waste time with World of Warcraft. But I can also waste time playing too much Baldur’s Gate 3, or Civilization, or by binging shows on Netflix.

But none of those allow me to spend thousands or tens of thousands by gambling on mechanics within the media itself.

How about we focus on that issue first?

Because there aren’t developers working those jobs realizing that workers are being worked to the bone because of businesses refusing to add limits to how much demand can come through their door.

I’m not sure why you believe game developers would be better suited to this than people who actually do business software development. And it’s less about what the developers want to do with software than it is about what the people to are buying the software want to do with that software.

Without journalism (or just a third-party in general) providing perspectives and communication in some way, you are relying primarily on the information coming directly from the companies themselves.

In this case we see that Sony was willing to fabricate quotes about an interview.

Wakestones are limited without microtransactions

But not that limited, you can find the shards and even wakestones from playing the game. Even the MTX alone you can only buy 5 max, which isn’t enough to ever make a difference in the game.

All of which just happens to encourage mistakes that can only be fixed using items which are very limited without microtransactions.

This isn’t true.

I don’t think I’ve had a Pixel phone that survived much past the two year mark. They’ve all had various issues, either problems with the battery/charging or just dying altogether.

I still use them because you can get them for cheaper than most phones, but “longer lasting” is the last adjective I would use for them.

How confirmed are these nerfs?

People constantly complaining about stealth nerfs is a tale as old as online gaming has existed.