TF2 hats were a dumb cash grab, but at least they were purely cosmetic. The orange box (TF2 + HL2 + Portal) was such a fantastic deal at the time, 3 AAA games for the price of one.

I will never understand the rage about the horse armor or WoW's cash shop.

"It's a cash grab!"

...then don't buy them? Like, I literally don't get it at all. It had zero effect on the game.

The biggest problem is being advertised to on a game I've already paid for and specifically in an MMO, being advertised to on a game I've already paid for and pay a subscription to. But y'see, it's not just being advertised to in the client UI or when I go to the website and there's an ad for a cosmetic item being 50% off for a limited time or whatever. It's going around in-game and seeing cash shop items everywhere acting as an advertisement that I can buy that item with real-world money.

Then there loot box drops like in CS:GO, or when a game adds in little inconveniences like limited inventory tabs, character limits, or games that add a grind and a way to avoid that grind via cash (XP buffs and the like).

It also sucks when the cash shop items take away from in-game content. Pretty sure this was an issue in WoW not too long ago when Blizzard added cash shop items that looked better and had better features than the in-game items you had to earn via raiding.

Then there are games like The Sims where you pay full price for the base game and then there are like a dozen different DLC packs of varying quality. I see they now made the game free to play (I paid full price when it was released) with a subscription option but I can also go to the DLC, add all of it to my cart, and pay $1,044.37 to get all the content. Awesome!

But really, the worst offender is CS:GO. You get FREE boxes in-game, pay for keys to open the free boxes you got, and you get those addicting animations and sounds. Literal slot machines being advertised to adults and children every day. How this hasn't been banned everywhere yet is beyond me. Egregious and greedy trash