The game industry's problem isn't that they treat the end users as mindless cattle, the film and music industries do that, too.
The game industry's problem isn't that they mass produce bullshit either, just look at pop music or straight-to-video films (the silverscreen lacks equivalents in either industry).
Piracy can't be it either, all three industries bitch about that (and all three would do well considering lower distribution/retail costs -- look at iTunes and Steam for successful examples).
So why is the PC game industry in particular at harm?
It's not. If you count in the sales via Steam (and equivalents) and the income from subscriptions (MMORPGs, Steam-like services), the PC gaming industry is all but dying.
What the article got right is that AAA games are no longer as powerful on the PC as they used to be.
Well, guess what. Casual games aren't as powerful on the consoles as they used to be either.
Remember Pacman and its ilk? Arcade games used to be almost exclusive (in terms of where they make their money) to arcades, i.e. big rooms full of consoles. Nowadays you get most of these via online shops or call-in services for your mobile.
Until Xbox Live and comparable services were released, these games lacked a proper platform on the console market (except for the few which could afford taking the same route as AAA titles, i.e. via retailers and WalMart-esque supermarkets -- or the bundles published as "minigames" usually joined by a known brand).
The PC was the first platform to see huge amounts of AAA titles, simply because it was bigger (and better) and less exclusive than any console the end user might have. It was more powerful than, say, a GameBoy and less restricted in what it could be used for than, say, a NES.
As consoles became more powerful it was only logical that AAA titles would eventually be produced for it. And now that they are mostly equivalent to what a PC can offer in terms of performance (if not controls: there ARE mouses for some consoles, even if the keyboard is usually considered too overkill to replace a neat little thing like a gamepad) it was pretty foreseeable that publishers would decide to go multiplatform with PC games (or rather: port console games to the PC as well).
What we see is only a drift towards an equilibrium. MMORPGs aside, consoles and computers will both have a share of the AAA (which only means "high production costs" anymore anyway) titles and casual games alike.
Hopefully developers will eventually start to focus on the unique advantages of the individual platforms again rather than just try to churn out the same game ported for as many platforms as possible and thus only exploiting the lowest common denominator again (which is why console ports for PCs almost always suck, at least in comparison to what an equivalent PC-exclusive title would be like).
But for that to happen, production costs (and thus, risks) need to be lower, so it can't happen while the industry only believes in selling by first impressions (i.e. looks and whiz-bang factor -- hype, if you want a name for it).
That some publishers now seem to panick and turn towards low-cost games is a necessary first step.
Gaming, and PC gaming in particular, is not "dying", it's simply evolving. It has happened before (anyone remember the "death" of arcade gaming after the market was flooded with Pacman clones and the like?) and it will happen again and again until the industry learns how to deal with its medium (or media, rather -- it's not a VHS vs. Betamax thing, nor vinyl vs. CD, it's more along the lines of novel vs. poetry, though maybe this is the right moment to point out that each industry IS unique, something game publishers need to learn too).
The game industry's problem isn't that they mass produce bullshit either, just look at pop music or straight-to-video films (the silverscreen lacks equivalents in either industry).
Piracy can't be it either, all three industries bitch about that (and all three would do well considering lower distribution/retail costs -- look at iTunes and Steam for successful examples).
So why is the PC game industry in particular at harm?
It's not. If you count in the sales via Steam (and equivalents) and the income from subscriptions (MMORPGs, Steam-like services), the PC gaming industry is all but dying.
What the article got right is that AAA games are no longer as powerful on the PC as they used to be.
Well, guess what. Casual games aren't as powerful on the consoles as they used to be either.
Remember Pacman and its ilk? Arcade games used to be almost exclusive (in terms of where they make their money) to arcades, i.e. big rooms full of consoles. Nowadays you get most of these via online shops or call-in services for your mobile.
Until Xbox Live and comparable services were released, these games lacked a proper platform on the console market (except for the few which could afford taking the same route as AAA titles, i.e. via retailers and WalMart-esque supermarkets -- or the bundles published as "minigames" usually joined by a known brand).
The PC was the first platform to see huge amounts of AAA titles, simply because it was bigger (and better) and less exclusive than any console the end user might have. It was more powerful than, say, a GameBoy and less restricted in what it could be used for than, say, a NES.
As consoles became more powerful it was only logical that AAA titles would eventually be produced for it. And now that they are mostly equivalent to what a PC can offer in terms of performance (if not controls: there ARE mouses for some consoles, even if the keyboard is usually considered too overkill to replace a neat little thing like a gamepad) it was pretty foreseeable that publishers would decide to go multiplatform with PC games (or rather: port console games to the PC as well).
What we see is only a drift towards an equilibrium. MMORPGs aside, consoles and computers will both have a share of the AAA (which only means "high production costs" anymore anyway) titles and casual games alike.
Hopefully developers will eventually start to focus on the unique advantages of the individual platforms again rather than just try to churn out the same game ported for as many platforms as possible and thus only exploiting the lowest common denominator again (which is why console ports for PCs almost always suck, at least in comparison to what an equivalent PC-exclusive title would be like).
But for that to happen, production costs (and thus, risks) need to be lower, so it can't happen while the industry only believes in selling by first impressions (i.e. looks and whiz-bang factor -- hype, if you want a name for it).
That some publishers now seem to panick and turn towards low-cost games is a necessary first step.
Gaming, and PC gaming in particular, is not "dying", it's simply evolving. It has happened before (anyone remember the "death" of arcade gaming after the market was flooded with Pacman clones and the like?) and it will happen again and again until the industry learns how to deal with its medium (or media, rather -- it's not a VHS vs. Betamax thing, nor vinyl vs. CD, it's more along the lines of novel vs. poetry, though maybe this is the right moment to point out that each industry IS unique, something game publishers need to learn too).
. I've returned the game to store and I'm going to write an e-mail to producer and distributor telling them why I didn't want their game and I'm going to ask them why they don't write any warning that their game is protected by an aggressive copy-protection program. It would save me a bus ticket to the store, because I boycott such games by default 
.