A successful gaming company going public ultimately leads to their IPs dying off thanks to executive meddling and the developers being sent to the mines to work on whatever is popular.

Thank God that the Sims appeals to such a wide casual audience and is one of the rare franchises in gaming with a higher female fanbase than a male one.

So much so that when the Sims 2 didn't have a breast size slider for fear that perverts would take advantage of it, the decision proved to be unpopular because too many of the fan base was unable to make Sims that accurately looked like themselves.

Because if that wasn't the case the life simulator genre would be pretty much dead, outside of promising looking indie games that try to replicate the experience, remain with a Steam page that says "Early Access" and a kickstarter that is ignoring all emails.

Even if every game after the Sims 2 was turned into a nickel and dime machine, and I say this as someone who not only has all of the DLC for The Sims 4, but also, remember the old days when people joked about The Sims 1 having an expansion pack for everything.

Incidentally I don't think downloadable content and micro transactions are necessarily a bad thing, it's certainly beats the alternative of going to the store and buying a new edition of the game that has like a couple of bug fixes and maybe one bonus dungeon at the end...

I just wish they were reigned in.

I'm all for private Enterprise being able to call its own shots as long as it isn't price gouging and hoarding Necessities like medicine, food, or housing.

That said if legislation came out and penalized companies for openly basing their business model on FOMO it would be one of the first times I actually wanted the video game industry to come under Fire by the government.