I bought in as my first tales game cause they actually gave it a budget, not a AA fame masquerading for AAA prices like some other studios, ahem atlus ahem. 

Generally western games get a higher level of scrutiny from me, but it is not like I will not play them.

Indie games get the highest level of scrutiny, so many of them have been unenjoyable even as free games on PS Plus.

Gacha games and mostly Chinese gacha also have to be extremely high quality for me to consider them.

I will give anything a try though, I probably just won't spend money on them.

Only MP games gets my guts twisted more than it should but I think that's also inherent from the fact most of them knowadays are developed as GAAS games.

Rogue Likes, don't make me feel trippy much honestly too.

Open world games that actually do not want you to lose yourself in it's environments for a bit and throws every points of interest of a map because they're afraid you find your own fun in there.
Guess what ? BOTW/TOTK, Elden Ring prove them wrong !

Let's see here...

Always online requirement.

Various other forms of DRM.

"partial controller support" (also no options for rebinds and M+K controls being arse and non rebind-able either).

Multiple account systems needed.

Launcher within a launcher.

Game split up into hundreds of DLC's.

Any modern game that does not support any other resolution past 1080p (I play at 1440p, c'mon guys it's 2025, there's no excuse to lack higher res monitor support now).

Live Service (If it's not adopting DRG's model I don't care, I will block the rest on Steam).

Battle Royale.

Souls-like.

Wiki games (Yes Wiki games, ones like Minecraft, Starbound, Terraria, Stardew and more have become far more reliant on external game knowledge rather than putting all that into their games for you to access and know at any given time).

Improper labelling tags (When I think of an RTS I think of C&C/Starcraft, not a game that's neither of those and is abusing tag additions for more views/wishlists, and yes I am getting super sick of browsing the RTS tag on Steam and finding non RTS games showing up there). 

Paid Season/battle pass (DRG's own version is completely free and also allows me to freely go back and forth between each pass).

Now these can seem rather small to just about anyone, but to me, it's a combination of the list above that can either put me off or just outright annoy me to hell with gaming. Trend chasing mixed in with companies trying to kill plug n' play is what really puts me off most of the time (DRM/online checks and account systems act as stop gaps and barriers to how plug n' play is supposed to work). 

CODE-IN-A-BOX

INTERNET DOWNLOAD REQUIRED TO PLAY

Same for me. Although I have to say that a new extreme has risen from the other side, people who think that any depiction of a black or gay character or something is automatically "woke". People need to take a chill pill and examine things on a case by case basis.

... what's wrong with Souls Likes? I Feel attacked...

It's just not my style of play. I see a load of devs AAA and indie that end up trend chasing/copying what FS have done with their Souls franchise and as a result, I see less games that play with what I liked in previous years.

So whenever I see "souls-like" tag for a game on Steam, It's an instant "nope" red flag for me and I put the game onto ignore (I've even had to block the tag, but not every dev tags their game as such, but will describe their games as Souls-likes in the video game descriptions). 

Got nothing against people who love them, I just don't like that sub genre, and I'm not a fan of it's power of influence on game design today. 

When a character in a third person game controls like it has balls of steel. This is a problem with many games since the 8th generation of consoles. When the character struggles to just turn around, when you try to run but it moves like he is crawling or something... I don't know how to explain it. But it's literally everywhere.

Regarding the above discussion about Souls-like games: I don't have much experience with Souls-likes, but my hunch too is that it's being used because it's trendy, not because it necessarily makes for good games in all cases. It's probably great for many games, but some (many) devs are probably jumping on the bandwagon because it's popular, not because it's their thing. Because of that, it's a great way to get me to ignore such games, because I trust only the best of the best Souls-like games to be worth my time.