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There used to be no moderation. I thought the world had gone insane first time I heard of a police visit due to an online threat (I think this was Runescape, 2016). Calling people faggot is nothing, you could SYN flood a stupid kids server and demand 20$ for him to stop. You could sexually harass children. You could doxx people. I remember a guy who tried to get himself temp-banned on Runescape, and the things he wrote would get him arrested today, and he only got a warning after a day of harassment efforts (this was 08 or 09). I don't remember meeting power-tripping moderators (with rare exceptions) before like 2014, and not before 2016 did I meet people who supported attacks on freedom.
We complained about monetization since DLCs started, and DLCs aren't even considered predatory anymore. I'm partly immune to the "burning frog" thing, so you may imagine how I feel about gaming now. Anyway, they might not care about a little wokeness, but the characters aren't attractive anymore, and some people are getting banned for just playing normally (Writing GG in the chat, picking specific characters in Overwatch, Japanese players yelling "Nigeru" in Apex). Many MTG cards are also being removed, disrupting gameplay. Even naive friends of mine who are not into politics and who still thinks that LGBTQ is about accepting people for who they are, are frequently confused or annoyed by down-stream consequences of wokeness (and the more abstract tendency of companies taking control away from users). Tekken-like games are being toned down to be less bloody and less sexy too. Some people notice this. There's also the "You can't hurt children in Skyrim" thing. Game lore, characters, textures, etc. are being changed/censored/removed retroactively to comply with the current moral norm, and many people are upset when they notice.
I guess that current children, who grew up with what we have now, have much lower standards, and that they don't care very much. I'd say that people older than perhaps 25 generally dislikes DEI and its consequences.
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