Personally “as a service” is OK if it’s actually sold that way. If I pay a fee per month or in some other way per use and that gives me access to the whole game as long as I play then I’m a happy camper and it gives the developer a steady stream to use towards improvements and keeping the servers online.

When you start double dipping or even triple dipping is when I start getting peeved. You can’t do a monthly fee and also lock stuff behind microtransactions, it might be somewhat OK if what you lock away is purely cosmetic and if you can still get them via say an in-game auction house a la SWTOR.

But some games have all of these:

• Pay for the game itself to let you play it
• Pay a monthly fee or have season passes to get access to certain content or very needed “convenience” features
• Have microtransactions that aren’t just cosmetics but give power / convenience or unlock features/content

And then it just feel like a money milking machine.

Generally if you do one of those you’re most likely OK, two can potentially work if you’re really careful. But all three is a no-go.

The Division did two and felt OK to me, the microtransactions on top were only cosmetics but it felt kinda shitty when you had already bought the game and paid for a season pass/expansions.

Destiny also did two and felt OK as well but after I quit I heard they made some really unpopular changes to the cosmetic system and their microtransactions?

League of Legends did one, the last one, and still felt OK from a monetization stand point. Same with Valorant.

Diablo 3 did all three and was brutalized for it to the point of changing it, but that’s the only example from the top of my head of someone triple dipping.