The play store is not really relevant to what I was talking about because
it is intentionally not curated. There will always be at least one place like
this where the developers who can't afford the expensive fees to get on the
curated stores will congregate. It also seems irrelevant to me to keep referring
to the "crash of 1983" when that was very obviously caused by Atari having a
monopoly, i.e. the exact opposite of there being an open market for hardware.
I personally have avoided many game development communities for exactly the reasons
you describe — overly extreme fear of "copy cats" to the point of paranoia, coupled with way too much enthusiasm to adopt certain pieces of cargo-culted technology without considering the question of who will
support it and for how long. I think Godot is a step in the right direction, but it will take these companies time to let go of these other APIs that cost them high prices just for the privilege of being able to read the documentation. They are not immune to these price dynamics.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_game_crash_of_1983
Game publishers love exclusives, it means there is no way copy cats land on the same medium.
For example, how Naughty Dog tried to turn Crash Bandicoot into Sony's mascot against Sega's Sonic.
"Crash Bandicoot Co-Creator Andy Gavin: Extended Interview"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSHj5UKSylk
It is ironic how disparate these kind of discussions on HN feel versus the general themes on game developer forums, magazines and conferences.
Same thing with APIs, on game developer universe "what cool things can I do with it", here "boo yet another way for the man to subjugate us".