As a consumer, I don't want to pay for anything extra as well. But for the sake of argument, these services cost millions of dollars to operate and companies expect a return when they put up money towards things. Even if they aren't hosting the game servers themselves, the costs of paying guys like Dan and the dozens or hundreds of people under him competitive salaries with benefits and all that adds up. It's a matter of offsetting those costs from other revenue streams or not.
PC services aren't centralized And it's an open platformso it's hard to even try to charge money on PC. PC storefronts like Steam That provide additional online services offset the costs through their main revenue but to be fair until lately they got way better margins than Xbox or PlayStation due to player purchasing habits. They also don't update their clients with new features/improvements at the same intensity. Steam also lacked decent support for many years and still doesn't offer a way to get "immediate" support.
These console platform owners don't make a lot of money selling you the consoles, they make their money traditionally from game sale royalties, sacrificing millions of dollars in the revenue that they were used to having to pay for the online services is undesirable. That revenue is already compensating for the millions in R&D. They have opportunity to charge money, people are willing to spend and so they do it.
I don't think it's poison or the most evil thing ever. I don't want to pay for it but I understand why, and I tolerate it. I'm primarily a PC gamer so I'm used to not paying for online multiplayer. But when I play a PS4 game online, I pay for PS+ because it's a low price and understand that it's not something free to run/operate.
