In my experience, most people who complain about the length of time it took to develop something like a game have no experience in relevant fields and don’t understand how long it really takes to do the bare minimum for even a 30 hour game experience, much less to make it a quality experience.

I could hammer out a “game” with dozens of hours of “content” in a week that perhaps a single digit number of people will buy before immediately requesting a refund. Making something good is what takes time. It involves a lot of steps of going back, seeing what works and what doesn’t, revising, and reiterating.

Breath of the Wild by comparison also took about 6 years to make with a team of 300 people. Silksong apparently was developed by a team of 3. While I doubt they were living the high life the entire 6 years, I also have doubts they were working each other like slaves. Therefore I believe they were likely working at a more normal pace for game development, and it simply takes that long to make a quality experience.

Given the current administration, bold of you to assume that they would spend a penny more than the absolute, bare minimum on healthcare, transport, etc

The latest Call of Duty game, Blacks Ops 6, is estimated to have a budget between $450,000,000 and $700,000,000. 1/10th of that budget ($45M to $70M) is still more than the entire development budget for The Witcher 3 at $35,000,000. The only thing they would likely need to cut back on is their marketing budget of $35,000,000.

You could probably make a hell of a lot of AAA games for the same price as GTA 6.

It’s not uncommon for people to make games for fun and to not get as much money as possible from them. It’s less common for companies and studios to not try to get as much money as possible from games, even less common for them to make games purely for fun.

Because generating fun doesn’t pay bills.