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This is a weird one but: cosmetic microtransactions in videogames.
I started really getting into video games at a point where these were still somewhat novel, and thought that despite some obvious fumbles like horse armour I thought they were the future. They provided the means for developers to sustain continued development without the requirement for subscriptions, expansions or pay-to-win benefits. And these benefits have been realised, MTX have proven to be an incredibly strong revenue stream. They are also consistently damaging to the games that use them. They bloat install sizes. They're often a source of framerate or other optimisation issues. And worst of all they inevitably descend into garish absurdity as developers try to tempt more purchases with offerings ever more outlandish and extravagant. There is nothing I have come to hate more seeing developers craft a rich and immersive world and proceed to desecrate it for money.
These days I'm team subscription.
Yeah, the worst-case a lot of people were proposing back in 2005-2008 didn't seem that bad. Big bad game developers might make extra content only a tiny fragment of the playerbase is interested in, and charge them extra for shit I don't care about? Oh no, not that briar patch! Yes, yes, selling to willing buyers at the current market price, but everyone knows this stuff is worthless, and indeed most people want it to be worthless since PTW is a deathknell.
And then we started getting more and more DLCs or MTX that fail to fit well into the space between 'should have been in base game' and 'shouldn't have been in the game at all'.
FFXIV's been less bad about it than most, but it's a) a subscription game and mtx, b) there's a lot of goofy non-mtx gear, and c) still has some pretty bad stinkers (a literal whale mount for whales). And I still get the feeling that some of the treadmillisms around goofy gear and seasonal events are a little downstream of it. I'd also put Rimworld and Oxygen Not Included in the same boat -- it does seem like it's helping fund genuine improvements and development, but both feels more like making a different game out of the original, rather than extending on or augmenting it.
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