They couldn’t charge for it, cause games were mostly offline. In this era of always-online stuff… People pay for it. Not the majority, but there are enough whales to cover for everyone, apparently… So companies do it. Gaming has become an industry. It’s not run by passionate developers anymore, but by investors. Why would they not charge for it in this time and age? There is literally no incentive, from their perspective of “we’re selling a product”.