If your player starts to get nauseous from the smoky casino air, can you visit the track and bet on the ponies?
Last summer, Rockstar Games included a working casino in their September Grand Theft Auto V Online update. There, for extra realism, the chips could be purchased for a dollar apiece. There are several countries that have banned this feature, but there's no telling whether they care much. Although to be fair, in Red Dead Redemption 2, Rockstar doesn't allow players to buy virtual gambling currency with real cash.
But at least with sports / crime / old west simulators, you can make the argument that gambling makes a certain amount of sense. And what fun is gambling unless you're putting real money on the line? But spending $300 to buy all the cosmetic skins for one character in a fighting game? That's what experts refer to as a "sucker's bet," and suckers were exactly what Mortal Kombat 11 seemed to be fishing for with its "Premium Shop." But although the ESRB doesn't seem to give much of a damn about such goings-on, they did deem it "M for Mature." Such activities would certainly be taboo in an "E for Everyone" title. Like, say, a remaster of a 20-year-old Crash Bandicoot racing game, which solved its grindy progression system by making the process easier via, you guessed it, microtransactions.
Activision