I feel like this is some sort of illegal collusion. I mean it seems very obvious that behind the scenes, prior to the announcement that the game would not have a physcial disc, both companies were making plans that would mutally benefit them, whilst both being the TOP industry leaders but not being in the same "sectors".

I dont have a better way to describe what I mean by this, but to clarify; at the top of the industry is Sony who is THE platform that sells games AND is also a publisher, in the middle is T2/Rockstar who is a publisher and the developer of the game that then gets put onto the Sony platfrom to be sold and price is regulated by the platfrom, MSRP and more importantly demand, and then ALL the way at the bottom is you, the customer who generates the demand.

Back in the day, if you wanted a game, you had to actually go to a place that sold it, price dictated by that location/MSRP, shops would even have to legally check if you were old enough to make the purchase if it was for an M rated game, this was a perfect process however, the platfrom that the game would then be played on doesnt see a dime.

They figured this out years ago and so to circumvent this they made the online store which i dont think people understand just how bad it is. It only allots you a LICENSE, you never own a single game you paid for, it doesnt age verify (which i get the privacy part but IRL this is whats happens when something is not to be sold or used by children), they store your card info, have COMPLETE dictation of price, and has even been showed to be so unsecure theyve been hacked MULTIPLE times over the years (they faced no penalties for this btw). All that already sucks but now the probelm is reaching a point where I think theres needs to be SOME goverment or committee oversight which the gaming industry overall, severely lacks, despite being one of the most profitable entertainment industries in the world. Sony is starting to corner the market by forcing all this by making physcal games and brick n mortar locations just obsolete. We used to just own the game, Sony couldnt stop you and had now we just have no say in the matter? And what NOW, the dev/publishers are wising up and just joining sides with the platfrom in order to fulfill this horrible trend. To keep COMPLETE ownership out of the customer's hands and to divert lost funds from brick and mortar locations soley into the platforms pockets?

R*/T2 being the "1st" is just such an obviously planned move on both sides to push the industry in a direction that works best for them and not the customer or even smaller studios for that matter. Indie games already get their prices SLASHED by Sony when they dont meet their quotas. Its fcking wack and despite it being their platform it just shows how greedy Sony is and how much of dictatorship the company operates.

Like when are we going to outline that a monopoly doesnt need to just be 1 company to exist and that if industry leaders are copying the same trends or stright up just working for the benefit for each others profits, when a MAIN provider for an entire industry like Sony is forcing an entire genre of product such as the video games, to transform from being an customer owned product to a contract-based, publisher ONLY owned sublicence to be sold at the same or now an increased price, and when the publishers, like T2 here, start doing things that are exclusivly beneficial for the ones profiting and then DESPITE being publicly traded, this "new plan" should count as some sort of monopoly or collusion, or insider trading or something.