Malgas

You’re describing Cunningham’s Law. Which the relevant xkcd doesn’t call anything in particular.

Nerd sniping is unrelated.

The argument also ignores that these platforms don’t charge more than the original brick and mortar distribution systems they replaced, under which the industry developed in the first place.

The thing that has changed is that AAA budgets have ballooned to the point that their sales targets have to be unrealistic. The author suggests that needing 4 to 8 million sales to break even is too many, but a game that currently needs 8M sales would still need well over 5M even if the platform’s cut was 0%. And I don’t have any confidence that the publishers would actually reduce their expectations for units sold even in that case.

Oh wow, they really nailed the visual presentation. If you presented those screenshots as being from a lost Impressions city builder I’d have believed it.