I have been a player of (tabletop) role-playing games since 1978. (I came at them from the drama flakes side of the fence, not the wargaming side, so this has informed my whole approach to them quite differently from most.) Back in the '70s and early-to-mid '80s there was a lot of cottage industry grade materials circulated in gaming circles for free. As in semi-professional (for the time) binding and typesetting levels of cottage industry. None of it was particularly top-grade in quality (though there were a lot of gems in the rough!), mostly small setting elements, small adventures, or, the most common, "random charts": random encounter charts, random reaction charts, random "contents of an outhouse" charts, etc.

Nowadays almost all of that is gone. People have gone to places like itch.io or Drive-Through RPG and peddle this same grade of material for money. And in the process they're kililng their own enjoyment of a hobby they love (because once your hobby becomes an obligation, you start to resent it instead of celebrating it), and, because commercial forces make you have to go where things are popular, it narrows the breadth of the field so that maybe two and a half games are covered (D&D and the so-called OSR are basically the same thing at the core).

The result is there's no ecosystem of shared joy any longer, all because people literally...

Probably a wise decision. I'm designing these campaigns for my own use, but I definitely feel an internal pressure to develop something for publication. I feel like I should be working, instead of enjoying myself. [actual quote from one such "publisher"]

...feel guilty because they're doing something for enjoyment instead of making money from it.

Hustle culture is insidious and omnipresent especially in North America.

Ain't that the truth! It's ruthless, destructive and draining. It's just bad.