Do you guys remember when the majority of the challenge with a fancy new game was finishing it? It's one of the things I find quite striking about this cancerous 'modern game design'. It's almost like with advertising online where the goal isn't to engage you with something genuinely interesting it's to practically force you to at any cost to keep you clicked onto something or watch something.
So as long as big studios see numbers go up and their player count being maintained, they're happy. Doesn't matter to them if they get 100,000 negative reviews on steam they'll just chug along going "Well those people might all be complaining but we've got 300,000 players durrr". Which is another example of how people who don't fucking play video games have taken over this industry.
The first descendent and once human seem to be classic examples of this mentality and explains to me at least a bit of why the studios refuse to give a shit. No peasant, how dare you demand good gameplay in a game, you're supposed to become a mentally ill skin addict and grind for hours to keep our numbers up or pay us money if you can't be bothered doing that.
Oh and of course I can't forget the cancer that is skill based matchmaking.
What's obnoxious too is that under modern engines, it's easier than ever for developers to dive right in and test things they're working on, which is not only great for making sure stuff works, but can be a fun and easy way to play around with new gameplay features and see how they're holding up.
I suppose it's possible that larger studios make it a pain in the ass to take advantage of such features. Maybe due to overzealous management and the soul-killing effects of working in some of these corporate environments.