Hexx wrote:"games as a service"
Basically their AAA budgets have got so out of control that sales are never enough now. They need a decent "tail" of ongoing income from DLC etc
This is the real sticking point for me.
You would perhaps be a tiny bit more tolerant to it all if these budgets actually led to well designed competitive innovative and high quality games, and the MTs were kept to cosmetics, Overwatch being a prime example. Not that that game had a particularly huge budget.
I do feel for certain developers though, injustice 2 filled the entire meat of their main single player mode with loot boxes and added a platinum killer trophy in obtaining one of rarest abilities as bait to spend real money. They were praised for creating an excellent new single player mode and becoming "the destiny of beat em ups" and Ed Boon was left laughing all the way to the bank smelling of roses. Forza 7 tries a similar thing which really isn't pay to win and while it's needless, only the very impatient are going to make use of their model, yet they are panned for it.
The message from the community and press is not always consistent.