Obscene? You will run out of superlatives pretty quickly if you use them so casually.

As VR has brought me closer to a world I previously had little contact with I've find the gaming community's quickness to anger and it's (lack of a) sense of perspective fairly exhausting.

It's impossible to even begin a discussion about monetisation strategies without getting shouted down. You'd think we were discussing gun reform in the midwest. ;-)

I grew up on games that had no monetization strategy beyond an initial investment. Many popular and hugely influential online games -- TF/TFC, the original Counterstrike -- were mods made by hobbyists and released for free, with the blessing of the original game's developers[1]. Gamers self-organized to create an infrastructure of public servers.

Pay to win games just moved the Overton window so far that these days, paying for cosmetic items doesn't seem like a big deal. I'm not angry about any of this; with ever decreasing time left for playing games I don't really care. Obscene may be a bit harsh -- I recycled it from the grandparent; but it does also imply that the judgment is relative and based on taste more than anything. I'd also use it when saying that I use an obscene amount of salt or that a sweater is an obscene color without intending to downplay affairs of state.

[1] This seems super rare these days, right?

It helps keep the game running. Have you read through some of their technical write-ups on the outages they've had? Talk about scaling issues.

Do you normally think all businesses that make a profit are obscene?

I think obscene is charging people $60 for a game and then driving everyone towards in game purchases for cosmetic items.