Beamer wrote on Oct 13, 2010, 16:22:

I'll be blunt, publishers and in part mainstream developers brought this hate and mistrust on themselves. They lost touch with their community and for better or worse the community too lost touch with them and now they both hate each other. But it was publishers, in their ever demanding quest of making more money, that started this downhill spiral.

No doubt much of corporate america deserves this. Everyone is still paying for the sins of Enron and Worldcom, but a few bad seeds have made everyone hated. And it's a death spiral as well.

Publishers didn't lose touch with the community, the community grew too large and they tried to please too many people. Those not being pleased got belligerent and publishers didn't know how to handle them. They also didn't care so much, 10,000 angry people and millions of happy? Why waste time on the angry ones when that time is better spent making the happy ones happier?

The community doesn't try to understand. The publishers don't try to explain. Both sides would rather not deal with each other because any time they do it turns out poorly. Losers: community.