Recently, a mature gamer under the nickname Playful-Vegetable-15 was telling his nephew about the "golden era of GTA: San Andreas."
In those years, Playful-Vegetable-15 sat in front of a CRT TV with a piece of paper covered in various cheat codes for obtaining ammo and a jetpack.
The nephew became interested in how much he had to pay in microtransactions:
He looked at me completely confused and asked the question: "Wait, how much did the jetpack cost?"
Playful-Vegetable-15 clarified that his nephew's question was not a joke:
He wasn't trying to make a joke. He sincerely believes that getting a cool item or an advantage is necessarily a transaction [donation]. It's a shame that an entire generation is growing up with the thought that fun is something you have to swipe a credit card for, rather than something unlocked by feverishly pressing R1, R2, L1, X, left, down, right, up. Man, I miss those days when developers hid secrets in games instead of locking them behind a paywall [the need to pay to unlock something].