If you're in game development, you know this story already.
Your game has been in development for three years. You picked Unity because it was free. You built everything around it. Your tools, your workflow, your team's expertise. The switching cost is six months minimum, maybe a year.
Then Unity announces the runtime fee. They'll charge you every time someone installs your game. Retroactively. For projects already shipped.
If you're not in game development, you have a different version. The platform you built your business on just changed its API pricing. The social network where you found your audience just changed the algorithm. The tool you rely on just announced new "features" that break your workflow.
Cory Doctorow calls this "enshittification." First, they're good to users. Then they abuse users to please business customers. Finally, they abuse business customers to extract everything for shareholders. Then they die.
Here's how it happens. The founders start by solving a problem. They build something people actually want. They lose money doing it because the point is to help, to grow, to matter.
Then they hire product managers. The product managers have dashboards. The dashboards need numbers. The numbers need to go up and to the right, every quarter, forever.
Reddit spent fifteen years letting developers build clients that made the site usable. Then priced API access to shut them all down right before the IPO. Audible owns 90% of the audiobook market and locks everything with DRM. Leave the platform and your library disappears. Twitter let you see tweets without logging in for a decade. Then Elon bought it and put everything behind a wall.
The pattern is everywhere once you see it. Airbnb costs more than hotels now. Google search shows you ads before answers. Netflix raised prices after winning the streaming wars. The dating apps keep you single because retention matters more than matches.
They were good until you needed them. Then they were good until their vendors needed them. Now the dashboard says growth is slowing.
What are you building on?