No, it isn't. In no way, shape, or form is it ruining the industry. It was never ruining the industry. In fact, one could argue it
helped the industry by giving the industry a much needed boost over the last decade.
You want to know what's actually ruining the industry?
Nothing. There is literally nothing "ruining" the industry. The video gaming industry is one of the largest, fastest growing, and most successful media entertainment industries in the world. Current estimates put the industry's worth at over $111,000,000,000 USD by the end of this fiscal year. And that only factors in part of the digital-only market.
Nothing is ruining the industry. It's more successful than it has ever been.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . .
That said, there are a few trends and practices within the industry that are being ruined by excessive greed and a willingness to exploit the end-user.
The free-to-play model, for example, is one that has a lot of positive potential, and has seen a few prime examples that have greatly benefited the developer and the players. Even so, egregious misuse of the model has lead to a lot of rather poor examples, and has given rise to design models such as "pay-to-win" and "freemium".
Likewise, continual release of extra content for online games leads to continued growth of communities related to those games. But the trend of locking away more and more content behind paywalls has begun to fragment online gaming communities, shortening the life expectancy of certain online games.
And then there's the LP'er trend, which has seen the market flooded by cheap, half-assed, cash-in games built around intentional awfulness or jump scares in an attempt to attract Let's Play'ers and free Youtube notoriety.
None of these things are "ruining" the industry, mind you, but they are issues that need addressing.
Silverbeard said:
Isn't billions of dollars an overstatement? A billion is a very big number. A fighter jet costs less than a billion dollars. If we assume that a single copy of a CoD game costs 60 USD, how many copies would have to be sold to make up multiple billions?
It's not a stretch at all.
http://fortune.com/2014/11/03/call-of-duty-advanced-warfare/
GTA V made similar revenue. And let's not forget to factor in DLC revenue.
Big, triple-A titles making over a billion in revenue is actually more common than you might expect. In fact, there may have been more billion-dollar video game releases over the last five years than there've been billion-dollar film releases.