The problem with paying in advance is that it allows game companies to ship games that are broken. Just look at the BF4 fiasco for example. DICE/EA told investors that it would be a great success while they secretly knew it was a pile of crap that wouldn't even work at launch. The only reason that the lawsuit brought by EA investors was dropped is because of the crooked legal system.
Besides pre-payment for broken games, the other biggest scam is multi-tiered pricing. Game companies simply strip content from a game and sell it as the "base edition" while the restored version is called the "deluxe edition".
I think everybody would agree that games have generally become much more realistic and immersive over the years which is a good thing. However, the other thing that has happened in that time is pre-payment/multi-tiered-pricing/online-only-DRM which has made it increasingly toxic for gamers.
From what I understand, DICE/EA is claiming that BF1 won't be a launch fiasco like BF4 was. However, you know things are really bad in the game industry when devs have to keep promising that their new game will actually work this time.