What happened?

I was just looking around the forums on my phone, and looked up a topic people were talking about. While I was looking around the internet, I found an article from September that talked about how Riot started and changed throughout the years. I just have to wonder what happened.

A lot of the article was likely bullshit, since it was written based largely on what Beck and Merril said to the interviewers, but some of it can't be lied about, and some is probably true. When Beck and Merril said that they spent a lot of time arguing, complaining and talking about games on the forums because they cared about those games and gaming in general (Hm, sounds familiar), and went from being dissatisfied with how things worked to deciding to up and make their own company.

Not only did they make their own company, they turned down the big publishers because they didn't want to just focus on money like that, and published their own game. They hired people who might not be all that experienced, but had a real passion for gaming and talent (a big gamble). They actually focused on the game, and making it the best they could. Esports wasn't even a thing, and they never expected to get a huge audience and playerbase making billions (last financial report said $1.6B)... hell, their first real esports scene they hosted was a big flop, and they sent people home.

What happened? These people and this company don't exist anymore. The Riot we have now is more like some Chinese / Korean cash grab than the one this article talks about. The old Blizzard (before Activision bought them out), Nintendo under Yamauchi and Iwata, the real Riot... where'd they all go? Do people just get a taste of money and then go entirely corrupt, not caring about the game they worked so hard on? Do they sell out to companies that only care for money (Activision, Tencent, EA, etc.)? Did they never care in the first place?

I just don't understand what happened -- to Riot or any of the other companies that used to exist.