No it's not, the community is just paying for it collectively! The players deserve a game that's better because they're still paying for it as a group instead of as individuals! Stop individualising yourselves so much that you can't even critique a product anymore!
I feel like you’ve got a particular game in mind.
I've heard it in so many games recently but yeah I guess the latest one I've been playing is Where Winds Meet and the response to any criticism is always "but it's a free game".
It's not free, the players are paying for it! It's an incredibly bad and individualised mindset. Getting people to group up and see themselves as "the community" would be much healthier and also teach them a thing or two that might lead them to some class consciousness if they apply it outside the games they play.
G*mers realize that free-to-play games aren't actually free challenge: impossible.
It's driving me mad. Especially if I'm a player who has literally paid something into the game. The response then is "you chose to do that". Yeah and? I am still a paying player who is responsible for this game continuing to exist!
These communities would have a stronger voice if they realised they all had the same interests - the game being better. And that they're all contributing something to the game as part of the community, whether it's contributing as just another totally player able to be matched with, a member of online discourse, content creator or paying player. It's all the same interests. Teaching these people to recognise their interests as one playerbase would teach them the same skill needed to recognise their class interests in the outside world. They individualise themselves to their own detriment.
It doesn’t help that those sort of games tend to be online competitive ones which breeds antagonism between the frugal players and the whales.
Not always, think of all the gacha games or the pve games that are funded entirely by cosmetics. Those big competitive ones are just the loudest.