[roody15]

It is unique in that Google has plenty of money and is not going out of business. In fact it just posted excellent earnings this week.

To say this project failed and everyone is just out of luck would really shows what kind of company Alphabet/Google really is.

[ocdtrekkie]

If they do this, they're probably hoping that developers of the games themselves will hand out free Steam keys to their now-angry customer base. More than likely this would happen for several titles, and they're probably counting on it.

[drumhead]

It really does feel like the company isnt being run by humans but a rudimentary AI somewhere.

[MichaelCollins]

Corporations may be comprised of humans, but the corporation itself is not human. This is particularly true for large corporations with a lot of organizational complexity, like Google. They are forms of artificial intelligence, but instead of running on silicon they run on the organizational chart. Corporations are capable of doing things that no individual human in the organization personally agrees with but go along with anyway because of the way the organization is structured and enforces compliance with itself. Even the executives at the top, who may believe they're in charge, are ultimately components in the machine whose perspective and insight into the true workings of the machine are filtered by the machine itself.

Don't expect human decency from a corporation, because corporations aren't humans. They're alien intelligence constructed out of humans, but that humanity is not inherited.

related: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_brain