Pay-to-win games are generally video games which have one ruleset. Playing Magic in tournaments has largely been P2W for decades. It's a collectable card game,

Pay-to-win games are generally video games which have one ruleset. Playing Magic in tournaments has largely been P2W for decades. It's a collectable card game, so the cards have varying rarity. The more powerful cards cost more on the secondary market. And Wizards of the Coast (and now Hasbro) keeps releasing new cards, which require more investment. But if I'm playing with my friends, we can make up whatever rules we want. I can easily source proxy ('fake') cards much more cheaply. Or, what we used to do, you get a land card (which is practically worthless) and write the name of the card you want on it. Then you act as if that land is the card you wrote. So amongst friends it's not nearly as expensive, because you can play Magic outside of the tournament ruleset. Not so with most P2W video games.