The developers who made Big Rigs probably wouldn’t have the budget to make an AAA game nowadays. A better comparison would be indie games, and there’s more of them (or it feels like it) due to easier development & distribution. (Which does involve shovelware). Even excluding Indies, AA games without subscription models are plentiful too.
Edit: (AAA games are a better example of being worse, I haven’t played them but comparing Assasin’s Creed or Metal Gear back in the day to now is better to show the bad practices. Thankfully, like I said, there’s just a ton more games and you don’t need to play the crappy ones)
The people who published Big Rigs are still out there publishing terrible mainstream license games such as the new Kong game and the new Avatar: TLA game (yes, really). They’re called “Game Mill”, and they are exactly what their name is, and their games are some of the worst on shelves. They don’t keep any employees very long and they have them work on games before they even get an order so they can slap the license into the game last-minute.
