I know it's a thing generally these days because of how shit multiplayer especially has gotten but if I see something that's 'online' now I don't want anything to do with it. Every new release it's the same story, they can barely be called games anymore they're more like a live service with some minor gameplay elements tacked on in the most half-arsed way imaginable. That goes for a lot of supposedly singleplayer releases as well depending on the company.
I think I'd much rather pour my free hours into something like Microsoft Flight Simulator because then I'd at least gain a valuable skill from it and I've also found myself delving back into the good stuff that was the early 2000's releases. Even if you see something that looks vaguely promising it inevitably gets annihilated by the DEI contractors that plague this industry now.
It's extremely ironic that the games industry is trying to cater to anybody who isn't a gamer and they seem to be all mentally ill weirdos to one degree or another who have an addiction problem and fleece them for all their money before moving onto the next cringey fad. I'm sorry for coming across too black pilled, but if a game does well it seems like that developers will go out of their way to ruin it because yet again, they've shown that gamers do not matter and we're nothing more than a vehicle for hype to get their product into the normie sphere who just want to college digital items all day instead of play the fucking game.
I never ditched online gaming. Online gaming ditched me.
They killed community servers. In the rare cases you can get a community server, you have to pay for the pleasure of renting one monthly, instead of it just being a headless machine at your home that you could set up with software that came on the game disc. Then in some games, you have to be vetted to be a good boy on a server you are paying for, and abide by their rules, or some easily offended jerk can get your server rights revoked.
They're chasing the perpetually online GAAS treadmill style of game, and have an in game shop to help cut down on the amount of time it gets to get [X] while doing everything in their power to make playing the game obnoxious until you pay.
Phone games had this market cornered so I'm told, and now it's infecting real games.
This isn't even getting into the fact that the people who used to make the games I love are now old enough to retire, and have. So there's no reason for me to even consider a new game unless a bunch of friends are playing it. My steam wish list has a bunch of older titles and indie titles in it to remind me about their release, so I can watch and wait to make sure DEI and censorship didn't kill it for the modern audience.
Very few games made in the last 5 years are drop in drop out co-op like Saints Row 3 and 4, for example. That is the exact thing I am looking for, and aside from a group of indie games, you just can't find that.
That's why I like steam so much. It has been an absolute godsend with remote play. I can get a game for a few bucks, or a friend can, and we can play together, even if we're across country. It might not be couch co-op, but it's as close as internet play together can be.