Feels ritualistic at this point.

Bethesda does the thing; gamers and modders do the thing. Bethesda says, "Whoops!" We all laugh.

Only difference this time is it feels like 76 has been out longer than when they usually try this.

They definitely did learn. They learned that they could charge for mods and people, sadly, will pay. They’ve learned that they can make more money by paywalling what should be essential patches and bugfixes. They learned that the average gamer is willing to be fleeced. They learned that they can run an IP into the ground and still extract maximum cash from it.

They’ve learned. They just didn’t learn the lesson that we here on Lemmy wanted them to learn. That’s a sad fact of being part of a minority community.

To be fair, it's a pretty common play. Company makes unpopular decision, walks it back, tries again a little later once the novelty has worn off and the MSM doesn't care to pick it up again.

I think this particular move is pretty ballsy with how egregious it is (especially considering that starfield didn't do anything particularly outstanding to overshadow it), but I don't doubt they'll try it again. If people keep buying their games, where's the risk? At worst they'll still get a few dollars from those who, for whatever reason, buy it, and then it's forgotten by the next time a game comes out.

Last time Bethesda just moved then out of steam and made money off of them on their own platform.

Bugthesda. Bugthesda never changes.