"They're very determined suddenly to see your game fail as a sort of a lesson to others who would make games of the same type"

He says this like it isn't how capitalism and markets fucking work. If you want more of your product then other people's product needs to make less money and look less appealing to make. They made it clear it was us or them when the entire industry shifted towards them to shaft us, so it now absolutely has to be a battle to not only get yours, but also make others fail.

more and more fandoms are making the things that they're fans of integral to their identity

A revelation straight out of 2010 where Tumblr was literally making or breaking shows entirely on their own. But back then it was progressive fan pushing, so it wasn't on his radar.

To the point that I think a lot of developers, more and more, are kind of withdrawing from the public sphere."

Literally no one asked for them to be in the public sphere. Every single time one of them popped their heads up it was to say some stupid shit nobody wanted to know about or associate with their product. The only people who ever appreciated that was the ones wanting a reason to hate you and waiting for you to provide.