I really can’t understand how their tech is so chronically held back. I understand they need their games to interop with modders and such. But can’t they keep that API relatively stable while modernizing the stack behind it? I clearly don’t get it.

Maybe it has to do with the way their games all take 11 years to make. It’s like interstellar war: you launch ships and you know they’ll need centuries to arrive and be outdated when they get there.