The lock-in cost is real and literal. It's far easier to migrate to a different voice comms system (which is free, usually), since you only have to convince your existing social network to create an account on the new thing.
The lock-in cost is real and literal. It's far easier to migrate to a different voice comms system (which is free, usually), since you only have to convince your existing social network to create an account on the new thing.
That said, buying certain games can lock you into using Windows. So there's that. But it's far better than buying games on modern consoles, which force you to use some special-snowflake hardware just to access the game you bought.
It's impossible to completely prevent all classes of lock-in, but it can be minimized. I would argue that my personal lock-in is minimized, across the axes I care about, by buying everything from Steam and GOG. No hard Windows dependency, no silly hardware dependency, and I'll almost certainly still have access to my games in 40 years.