Quote Originally Posted by kaynide View Post
It is not SE's job to babysit adults. SE is hardly "exploiting" anyone, nor is this even remotely a predatory thing. Adults need to take responsibility for their actions and choices. If owning a house in a virtual game that you hate is truly that important to you, that's a you thing and there is nothing SE could do to fix it.

Moreover, I have yet to encounter even a single person who was so addicted to owning a virtual house in this or ANY game, yet hated everything else and couldn't walk away.

I HAVE met over a dozen that let their house lapse and regretted it later, but nobody nerd raged over it.
But it is predatory as hell. There's unique content locked behind housing (namely gardening, fc rooms, and the company workshop), housing is advertised as one of the key contents alongside the story, glamour and combat, yet it's locked behind placard camping, scarcity, and a required subscription? There's no excuse for that. It's not on the player.

You don't lose levels, glam pieces or pages when you unsub, and no one would ever find that acceptable if the devs told you to unsub if you don't want to play the game, but also taking away things you worked for in your playtime.

It pressures people to stay subbed because housing is usually a ton of time spent on the game earning the gil to buy and decorate it, ward browsing and placard spamming, and it can also be a massive amount of luck depending on the plot they had. Most predatories practice have the victim pay out of their own volition, and housing is no exception.