Ah, back when game development was managed by game developers who were gamers themselves and prioritized quality over min-maxing shareholder profits…
Or another way to look at it, is that it was the market takeover phase of capitalism where capitalists are willing to operate at a loss to corner the market and create their own monopolies (see Nintendo, Google, Facebook, Amazon, etc). But once market grow stalls out they switch to the milking phase or enshitification phase of capitalism where they prioritize profits over everything else
Yeah, it probably wasn’t murder, but considering that the US is quickly becoming a fascist oligarcny just like Russia is, and more and more American whistle blowers seem to be mysteriously dying… I wouldn’t be surprised to learn he was murdered. The oligarchs are evil af and any government that can aggressively fund a baby killing genocide is also evil enough to kill people for petty reasons