The only “open world” game that’s been a linear story survival sandbox that I’ve seen do it well is Raft. And that only works because of the medium of it being an open sea where the players can wander, then move through the story at their leisure.

Stealing profits that are already made by stealing? Yeah, I have no sympathy for that.

Tax payers already pay for this shit through federal funding of the sciences, just for the publishers to turn around and steal people’s time and money to view and peer review them. Publishers are thieves, so they can go fuck themselves.