Microsoft intended the online game functionality to be a premium feature (like MMORPG fees) and Sony said (before the PS4 launched) that offering online for free was one of the biggest mistakes they made during the PS3 era because they could have earned alot of money.
Now they say stuff like "we cant afford free online anymore because of the massive server costs"
Guess what make games have player hosted servers as on PC and you would not have server costs at all.
Microsoft and Sony should let people play for free with their friends on servers they can host on their own and should keep the fee for people that care about online tournaments or leaderboard bullshit etc.
There is exactly 2 reasons for online fees. #1 Earning easy money and #2 having the possibility to shut down the old games servers when you want everyone to move on to the next installment of a game franchise. (#2 just happens occasionally but it does happen. Its not about doing all the time but about being able to do it and its about getting people used to official servers )
There is zero advantage and zero plausible reason for people to be forced to pay a fee to play with their friends. I know my friends dont cheat and If I want a 100% guaranteed cheat free game session I could still play on official servers and then pay a fee. Or play on community servers that also run anticheat software like on PC (this is also free!)
Online fees are a joke.
Btw Games with Gold is kinda neat because you can keep the games forever even if they are somewhat old. But PSN+ is an ethical nightmare. It plays with the human fear of loss because the longer you have a subscription the more forced you feel to keep the subscription because you lose more games the longer you are a PS+ member. Thats psychology 101 "how to make people addictive" (its the same principle mmorpgs work. The longer you play and the more you paid the harder it gets to stop playing. You lose more the longer you play and you think "I cant stop now because everything would have been for nothing")
