None of the downsides you've mentioned are exclusive to online games, though. Publishers put these mechanics in single player games as often as they do it in online games so you criticism doesn't make much sense here, to be honest. There are also countless online games that don't have any of those things.

[–] leftzero@lemmynsfw.com 1 points 3 days ago

Only online "games" this maybe wouldn't apply to would have to be peer to peer, serverless, and probably open source to be safe... and, even then, you'd have to provide a sufficient amount of players to replay them a decade on, as, lacking any actual game, they're useless without other players.

As for offline games, sure, publishers might attempt to use them in the same way, but it's much more expensive since a minimum amount of game must actually exist in order for players to fall for it, and they can't fake it using other players. Asset flips are obviously a thing, but easily detected and avoided. And, most importantly, even those will remain equally playable or unplayable in a few decades, while an online "game" will be unplayable the instant it doesn't have enough players.