10 Beloved Video Games Series That Have Been Ruined By The Industry

2. The Sims

Oh, Sims. Whatever happened to you? You used to be so sweet and innocent, with your charming soundtrack and gameplay that encouraged us to find unique and tortuous ways of killing our sims. Now, you're just... microtransactions.

In terms of gameplay, developers Maxis never did anything in particular to ruin the series: they simply took the gameplay formula of building a house, then guiding your Sims through their lives to whatever grave you choose, and gave it better graphics with each release, while stripping back some of the content found in the previous entry's expansion packs so they could sell it all over again.

The micro-transaction scourge started in The Sims 3, where the game eventually got to a point that you'd be forced to scroll through rows upon rows of greyed-out items that you had to pay for. This flagrant way of manipulating players into parting with their money, which the has stripped the series of all its charm and turned it a nasty money-spinning machine, shows no signs of stopping.