Windows 10 Starts Charging for Missing Features

Was is it being charged for to download and use though?

DVD Playback was removed in Windows 8 because Microsoft said that almost exactly $15 in the cost of Windows 7 was the DVD patent/license fees. It became available as an upcharge to the "with Windows Media Center" editions of Windows.

Solitaire was also removed in Windows 8 and the new game apps were created then. I too don't like that Arkadium (developers given the license from Microsoft) have been allowed to make them increasingly naggy Adware/Freemium, but sadly that is a lot more to do with the current state of the videogame industry than the current state of Windows.

Solitaire was removed because they wanted universal apps and someone else (Arkadium) to foot the bill for development. Given that Solitaire was a hobby project thrown in for free, it's kind of amazing it was distributed in as many versions of Windows as it was (and that it survived for so long with very little needed in maintenance/bug fixes). Enterprises kept asking for it not to be included in Windows, and now it is not and an enterprise has easy ways to stop people from installing it now... Consumers "win" in that it's now a product from an actual game company with actual monetization goals in a culture that has allowed ad-ware and freemium to become atrociously obnoxious... (Just look at Windows 10 "kindly" even including a free install to consumers of modern evil Solitaire "Candy Crush Saga". Unsurprisingly, from that benchmark, Arkadium's Solitaire is actually less nagging and cheaper.)