It has gotten absolutely out of control. I will be reading an article about a new game, and the article won't even have a link to the store page to buy the game...

Which store page should they be linking to? Inevitably what you’re asking for is how we’ve ended up with sites spinning off thousands of articles stuffed full of affiliate links.

Just link to a few? There's a finite set of stores a game is usually on

On PC, it'll be Steam, GOG, maybe Humble. Then on consoles you have Xbox, Playstation and Nintendo. If you wanna put affiliate link, go for it. It's better than no link at all.

These articles already bait my click for ads by never putting the name of the game in the title anyways. At least let me get to the game and buy it.

It’s not about insecurity - it’s more like a user will accidentally click on the link, end up on the company’s site, not realise they’ve left the news site, be confused as to why the news site is trying so hard to sell them a dishwasher, not remember they were just reading an article about them, and will be scared and alienated.

Oh my god, the horror! The user will be confused, not remember, and they will be gasp scared? Alienated?? After accidentally clicking a link??? Jesus Christ the internet is such a scary place.