It's primarily them making all these mini packs for a lot of money still that hardly add any actual value to the game. It's not like the way it used to be in the Sims 3 or earlier. It's boiled down to pure greed. They've stripped the base game so much, when compared to the older games, you had more in the base game. Like swimming pools for example.
It's quite the annoyance, I much prefer the older games, and LGR covers this topic quite well in his series.