What started out as a passionate hobby for some programmers and artists, grew to a handful of companies making games for a very specific target audience. Back in the 80's, gaming wasn't as widespread as today. Today, it's a multi-million dollar industry, with more companies, publishers and games than you can count. Top-tier games require millions of investment, too, and how are the people who paid for development get their money back? By making their games easy to access, and thus, appeal to as many potential buyers as possible (look at reason #7). In an industry ruled by shareholders, big companies with faceless bosses, people who want to express their love for video games through their creations but face walls of "this will not sell well", it's sad to see the effect these have on it. Of course, not every developer is guilty. Example: Tons upon tons of games