I haven’t played for years now but NeoTokyo still has an active community.
Post Scriptum (now known as Squad 44) is still alive. A very under-appreciated game and they are trying to revive it with a new dev team who have been doing wonders but the active player count is still well below 1k.
People are overly loyal to Steam and don’t realise the huge market share they have. It’s not technically a monopoly but everyone else is fighting over the 20% that Steam doesn’t have so who can blame Epic for throwing money at the problem.
Also that PS2 is stunning. I kinda miss all the colourful and/or transparent consoles stuff as it used to be a reasonable option but now it comes with a “special edition” price tag.
I’ve been playing it on and off for over 20 years now with some definite highs and lows but I have nothing but respect for the devs (3 people) and community. It’s not on any store fronts and they just do their own thing.
There are so many options out there that asking for $80, or whatever the equivalent is, is just ridiculous. I really hope people stand up against this bulshit.
There has always been an inherent value to consoles but if that goes away then I can genuinely see them dying off. Personally I thinks the current gen is a huge disappointment anyway and this news just makes it even more ridiculous.