And then the corpo-drones come out of the woodwork and say: "Achtually, they need to charge that much because of the big teams needed to make them."

… only for the team which made them to be fired in order to reduce costs, as the CEOs keep getting record-breaking bonuses.

Also, indies are not trying to dickride the "live service" trend at all, most of them being perfectly playable single-player experiences with optional online features.