In general talking about something bad, disappointing or controversal is always a good way to generate clicks. That works for news too. We humans are wired just like that. So its not something that has become recently a bad habit, this is something happening since decades, before and outside of gaming as well.
Bad headline but reasonable argument within. Concord probably failed for the reasons people outlined, sure.
The point is that peoples fingers aren’t quite as on the pulse of what will make something successful as what we give ourselves credit for. We attribute reasons for something’s success or failure after the fact.
Personally, I don’t know what makes a hero shooter successful or not. A game like this could be going gangbusters for some reason in 6 months time and I would probably not understand why. I say that as someone who’s been an avid gamer over the last 30 years.
I have a very simple reason for hating Concord and being slightly happy that it failed: They bait-and-switched the hell out of all of us with that reveal video.
You can’t build up an interesting world filled with characters like that and then give us a PvP-only hero shooter. Who do you think you are, old Blizzard?