I think the issue these days is that so many VC funded companies give away products for free to essentially capture the entire market so no non-VC funded can compete with that, or numerous "free" (ad supported) or in-app-purchases funded competition (the ad supported ones frequently being just direct clones of other peoples work) force the purchase price down below the actual development cost.
People now believe apps should be free, or cheap enough that they don't cover the actual costs for people who are doing the actual development costs.
I'm not sure what the real path forward for developers in this environment - if you charge the necessary amount you're undercut by separately funded products or ad supported apps, if you charge a "competitive" amount you can't live off it, if you have a subscription that supports ongoing dev people say "I only want to pay a single time".
None of this helped when you then have asshole game devs that sell games for $100+, but then throw in constant in app purchases and DLC for basic functionality that used to be part of the game.
When the VC money was sponsoring everything, everything's price has become free and today they are recouping their investment and people begin talking about "enshittification". Free(as on free beer) software was simply a predatory practice to shape the market in certain way and prepare it for exploitation.
People now believe apps should be free, or cheap enough that they don't cover the actual costs for people who are doing the actual development costs.
I'm not sure what the real path forward for developers in this environment - if you charge the necessary amount you're undercut by separately funded products or ad supported apps, if you charge a "competitive" amount you can't live off it, if you have a subscription that supports ongoing dev people say "I only want to pay a single time".
None of this helped when you then have asshole game devs that sell games for $100+, but then throw in constant in app purchases and DLC for basic functionality that used to be part of the game.