Greed has been a problem in the AAA game space for a long time. It’s just that before reliable Internet connections, it was harder to exploit people.

Before this, it was lootboxes and gambling Mechanics, before that, it was microtransactions, balancing the game to incentivise spending money, and before that it was chopping bits off the game and selling it as DLC.

Prior to that, the worst we got was cheap sequels and shovelware.