No certainly not.  However, there aren't many items that cost close to what you pay for them.  Capitalism demands profits.  Is our unfortunate reality.

It's not only the cost to mantain servers on, but pay a team to keep working on the games to bring new content and so forth, it is heavy mainly in MMOs.

Online fees for consoles PS4, Switch and XboxOne are pure money making, thinking they are something else is naive. They hype their features and "free" games etc., but that doesn´t change the facts. Those profit margins are huge and they could be free now and have been free in the past. Excuses are for those that want to feel better about paying for online play.

Most MMOs are either subscription or F2P/microtransaction only, being the majority F2P (Aion case) or B2P (Guild Wars 2 case) with microtransactions because it attracts more players than  having a sub, the old sub model is getting more and more unpopular as the time goes on, [WoW for example has all 3 models at once (buy the game (B2P)/pay sub/has microtransactions) which explains why it is losing players on a steadily basis].

The F2P + microtransactions model is what is attracting more players today. Lots of games make billion+ yearly revenues being free to play with only having microtransactions, like League of Legends.

Because the architecture behind a network is far more intensive than setting up P2P servers. When you play a game online on PS4, you're playing it on PSN, not the server list that varies wildly from dev to dev. While netcode isn't created equal, you know the product will work.

To summarize all the work that has gone into it as the same thing as digital storefronts or to deny the leaps and bounds in product quality.... Man, I don't even know what to call that. Blissful ignorance? It's like how people falsely say that PSN/XBL are doing the same thing as Steam when Steam hosts absolutely nothing off store. They don't offer the same product at all.

If you don't think the value is worth the cost, then don't buy it. I will pay for it because I place very high value on cloud saves, PSN discounts, and free games.

Heh, I'm sure it cost millions to build/maintain their servers and online services. Perhaps many millions. I mean they have a staff and the services are used by many millions of people whether it be online play or any other service that uses their servers.

But their goal isn't to lose money or break even, these subscription services are part of what makes these platforms profitable and relatively speaking its cheap. I mean PS+ and XBLG COMBINED is about same price as a year of Netflix.

You know, we are on an online forum with the ability to reply to people ... you could just ask for clarification instead of calling others ignorant instantly. I will admit I worded that badly as there is a common misconception that Steam and PSN are the exact same, so I can see why you assumed I was being ignorant ... however that's not what I was getting at and you could just simply ask me for clarification before hammering down judgment. Just to be clear, I *know* that PSN and Steam are different, PSN is much more complex and hosts multiple games. However, even if PSN has higher costs because it's an entire network and not just a system of servers spread around one individual product ... that doesn't really change the fact that you're paying money for a console for the purpose of playing those consoles games, no? That's kind of the point of the consoles, and in 2018 you'd expect that the ability to use internet freely comes in that package. 

Simply put, PSN's problem isn't the value, it's the fact that you have to pay to use online in the first place. Your excuse and Sony's excuse is the value, but that value could just be put behind any other subscription service. So they have to lock the value behind the ability to play online. Most people who have PSN are paying for it JUST BECAUSE you have to use it to play online. You can use the excuse all you want of the "value" but I would rather just play online for free and have the option for a separate subscription service ... 

Of course it's fair. This isn't a game of cards, this is capitalism.

It's fair for them to charge $200 if they wanted. It's their product, they have that right. No one is entitled to "free online" or any other feature.

At the same time, of course, consumers have the right to not buy that product.

Aren't the online services free on PC? Why would developers waste millions on their PC servers?

Many felt that they had no other option, than to suck it up and pay. Were are not entitled to anything. Microsoft first tested the waters and gamers gobbled it up, then Sony followed and everyone was fine with it and now Nintendo is about to do it, because why not? We gamers made it easy for them.