When I bought a $60 game in 1996, I knew it was a complete product. It might have a bug that made it impossible to finish, but returns are a solved problem. I knew I had a product that was made, possibly incompetently, for fun, or to tell a story.

I wasn't buying something that was trying to nudge me into spending another $400 on different pixel colors, or worse, different characters, abilities, or effects.

Modern video games have adopted techniques used by the gambling industry to trigger essentially addiction, because game companies prefer 3 whales to a thousand happy individuals buying the game a single time and playing it forever happily.

Because they were not satisfied with making a million dollars off a video game. That wasn't enough money.

You used to be able to buy games used for a tiny fraction of the original price, and you used to be able to sell games you finished or didn't like. Now you have to pay the full price, every time, irreversibly.