If Xavier specified that he meant the publishers expectations are unreasonable I wouldn't have a problem but these critiques aren't about the publishers they're about the audience having too high of expectations.
I'd suggest they get busy then. I'm sorry for being terse but as someone who has been fired for unionizing I get a little annoyed with takes that boil down to "a better world isn't possible".
We cant have nice things because game dev is hard is not a take I agree with. There could be more studios with well developed pipelines, and rational timeframes of completion that eschew predatory monetization if these devs would unionize.
I'm not saying it would fix everything overnight. Being unionized doesn't protect you from mismanagement - but it can protect you from feeling like you have unreasonable expectations to meet.
I don't think that first part is true at all. This era of gaming is pretty much hallmarked by indie success and AAA bloat and failure.
Resources / Team size is a discussion about working conditions.
edit: He edited his comment to make me look wrong. Neat.
I didn't know that. It kind of makes the take even more baffling. Why does he care? If he has no overlord he should be free to do whatever he wants. Indie games don't have to follow those expectations at all.
To me the Xavier tweets read like opinions of a comfortable person who is too afraid to agitate for better working conditions and instead is trying to manage expectations, so we'll have to disagree on that.
I dunno what Obsidian said specifically but I have a pretty poor opinion of any dev trying to redirect this to the audience. If it was just "I wish we had a bigger budget" then I have no prob with that.
If you are gonna posthumously edit your comments to change the meaning you should give the person a heads up. Now I look like I'm wrong about something I was objectively correct about.