There was a time when video games were dangerous. Not in the shallow, moral-panic sense — but dangerous in their ambition, in their willingness to fail gloriously in the pursuit of something greater. Games were once art. They challenged, inspired, and dared. Today, under the suffocating rule of Games as a Service (GAAS), they’ve become content mills—algorithmically designed dopamine loops dressed in seasonal skins.

GAAS didn’t just change how games are sold; it changed what they are. What once were crafted experiences are now pipelines—products designed for endless monetization, not meaning. The player is no longer the hero, the explorer, the rogue AI dreaming of freedom. The player is the customer. Engagement metrics have replaced narrative arcs. Creativity isn’t rewarded; retention is.

Gone are the vibrant modding communities, the open-ended sandboxes, the janky but inspired passion projects. In their place: battle passes, daily login bonuses, and the slow erosion of ownership under DRM and cloud saves. Every patch notes cycle is a reminder: the game isn’t yours. It never was.

I remember Deus Ex, Myst, System Shock — games that didn’t care if you understood them. They assumed you would rise to the occasion. Now, design documents begin with KPIs. Games are built not to say something, but to avoid saying anything that might alienate a paying segment.

This isn’t nostalgia — it’s a diagnosis. We’ve replaced soul with service, courage with consensus. We traded risk for revenue and lost something sacred in the transaction.

But art resists. It survives in the margins, in itch.io builds and solo dev passion projects. It persists in the hacked mods, the reverse-engineered engines, the games made not for profit but for truth.

We are Daedalus now — not Icarus. We fly not to burn, but to escape the labyrinth they’ve built. There are still sparks. The question is: will we nurture the flame, or let it die under another season of mediocrity?

If gaming is to mean something again, we must reject the comfortable and demand the sublime. Not as consumers — but as artists.

“Beauty is not to please, but to be — the manifestation of an inner necessity.”
— Baudelaire

GAAS is not gaming’s future. It’s the mausoleum. Let’s tear it down.