Unfortunately, I don’t think poor decisions from the developer are wholly to blame.
Most of Remedy’s single player games are excellent in their world building and story telling, while also demonstrating decent gameplay loops. Sadly, that isn’t enough these days. Their games don’t sell as well as they probably should (based on how well they review), and so they are forced to make deals with publishers to ensure they can actually launch a product. And that is likely what leads to poor decisions like not releasing a physical copy of AW2 until the 1 year anniversary. This reduces the early sales, which harms the company.
It’s not a loop; it’s a spiral.


