In east Asia, about 20 years ago with gacha games like Maple Story and slightly later with games that you'd play for free in an Internet Cafe, but would offer y

In east Asia, about 20 years ago with gacha games like Maple Story and slightly later with games that you'd play for free in an Internet Cafe, but would offer you loot crates. It became news in the west when EA took notice and added loot crates in FIFA 09, then TF2 famously was made free to play in order to hook more people in and push loot crates on them. It took off from there. Throughout this time there were Facebook games like this and eventually games like Puzzle and Dragons were pretty mainstream on mobile platforms by 2011. Also of note, in many jurisdictions that regulate gambling, companies have found loopholes that offer arcade style "games of skill" that are still like 99.9% games of chance to get around gambling regulations. So gambling is also becoming more like gaming. It's enshittification all the way down.