It started with the runaway success of Call of Duty 4 making Activision turn its Eye of Sauron on the franchise and the developers, bringing in more studios to work the COD mines and turning it into a cash cow. Black Ops 2 for example had that attempt at turning the series into an e-sport with an MLG mode that went nowhere.
Ghosts didn't have anything particularly special about it in terms of predatory practices, but it was the worst entry in the series up to that point.