I really do appreciate the passion the original poster had for his games. In many ways my friend, I agree with you. However, as you were no doubt aware when you wrote the article, which was coming from a moral standpoint, that business and morals are often poles apart. And this IS business.
I , for many years harboured the same resentment towards EA regards a company called Westwood studios, who made two wonderful series called Command & Conquer and Lands of Lore. EA bought them and within a year closed them down but retained the IP.
Years later , between 2005-2007-ish I found myself, through necessity ( I needed the cash) working for EA as a games tester at their Chertsey campus. It was whilst looking through the global email list one day that I saw around 4 of the Westwood managers/directors still working for EA. So essentially, they had kept their jobs, but the staff for the most part, had lost theirs. Westwood, it turns out, was also just a business.
On a slightly related note, notice that Realms of the Haunting was released on GOG a while back. This was written by an excellent games programmer/developer called Tony Crowther, who also wrote numerous C64 games ( Blagger, Trap etc ) and two frankly awesome games on the 16 bit systems, Captive & Knightmare. A virtual one man band of gaming design excellence. After ROTH was released on GOG I decided to see what his work was these days.
Turns out he works for EA, and one of the latest titles he helped code was the last Burnout game, where he is listed as just part of the programming team. He has become part of the business, but in his case it seems all good, as he needs to pay his way through life.
I do appreciate your feelings about games companies, but I think the games designers, who have the real passion about their games, are far removed from the suits who seem to rule our lives and make poor management( in our eyes at least) decisions.
Its just business, it would seem. Keep those home fires burning my friend.
