Enshittification

Enshitiffication is a phenomenon where companies providing flagship services purposely make their platform worse. First they provide services for everyone, then they make services worse for customers while benefiting business customers, and then they make the service for everyone worse, to gain profit. Enshittification usually prioritizes money over users. Shareholders and investors need the money so they do just that, like putting ads everywhere, adding AI features, etc. for them.

Google

Google's search results have gotten worse over the years, partly due to people abusing SEO and partly due to Google ignoring the glaring issues with the platform and introducing an AI overview.

Reddit

Around 2023, Reddit would remove the free API tier that allowed third party Reddit clients to work. This was met with backlash since users used third party Reddit clients to get features and improvements the official Reddit app didn't have. Reddit would also add some AI features. The most notable is the Reddit Answers feature. It used AI to summarize context of Reddit posts.

YouTube

YouTube has faced enshittification, usually by putting frequent ads, blocking ad blockers, adding AI features for some regions within the app and website, and also having extremely ineffective AI moderation.

Duolingo

Duolingo is one of the most popular language learning apps to face enshittification. Enshittification of Duolingo was done by changing or removing features like limiting practice for hearts, making users watch ads to earn hearts, frequent ads, and switching over to a new system called Energy. Energy is the worst thing that came to Duolingo, you use energy by getting exercises correct, and you won't be able to do lessons anymore when you use all your energy.

An image of the Plants vs. Zombies 2 menu with plants that you have to pay real money to unlock, taken sometime in 2013.

Plants vs. Zombies

A particular franchise that has been hit with enshittification is Plants vs. Zombies. Beginning with EA buying out Popcap in 2011 and having them move their business from good fun games to F2P Mobile Games. This was shown with the release of Plants vs. Zombies 2, which included an in-game currency (diamonds), a leveling system (plant levels), and microtransactions (with both in-game currency, plants, and more).

The original Plants vs. Zombies' mobile port kept getting updates over the years, each one adding more annoying features which were used to shove ads into every nook and cranny of the game. This has been met with a lot of backlash, though Popcap has not reverted any of the changes to the port.

The Plants vs. Zombies franchise kept getting hit with more enshittification with the game Plants vs. Zombies Heroes, which would have the rarities of the cards in it go up in the hopes of getting players to spend more on the game to get them, along with upping the prices of the in-game currencies.

Another branch of the Plants vs. Zombies franchise - the Garden Warfare series - was also hit badly with the third and (currently) final installation in the series: Plants vs. Zombies: Battle for Neighborville. The game was received poorly by fans of the series, saying that the game was lacking in content and soul, especially compared to the previous installation, Plants vs. Zombies Garden Warfare 2, which was packed full with content, characters, and events.

Plants vs. Zombies 3 is an amalgamation of mismanagement, neglect, and the push to include P2W features in every part of a game. It was originally released in 2019 as a sequel to Plants vs. Zombies 2, but was hated on widely for looking horrible and squished. The Plants vs. Zombies developers would listen to this criticism and would take down the game later that year. It would later (throughout 2021-2024) see multiple small re-releases as it was redesigned to be a bit more acceptable. TBD

PVZ Replanted TBA