I dunno man, I started gaming with the Atari, C64 and NES, and I never paid full price back then either. Rentals, used games, piracy… that was a good 95%+ of my gaming experience.
The only time I got full price games was maybe a birthday or Christmas, but even that was rare for a major AAA release like Mario 3 or E.T.
Maybe your memory is just one person’s experience and not an absolute truth.
My wife bought a new Pixel 8 recently from Google Fi. They sent a Pixel 6a for some reason. She attempted to work with their incompetent, powerless, disconnected and foreign support for a week to get something to happen, desperately reaching out every day for someone to just tell her what was happening. Then, she just purchased a new one because you can’t go longer than that without a phone.
Then it was 2 more weeks of them failing to issue a refund for the original wrong phone, trying to ship another phone that she no longer needed, and simultaneously trying to bill her a penalty for not yet activating the phone that was originally shipped.
All it would take is one person who had information, authority, and a modicum of understanding. Nope. That is not a thing that can be achieved through any level of escalation at Google anymore.
Nokia had the same problem recently during a recent issue. They have intentionally made it impossible to solve issues. This is what some companies want. Don’t buy from them.