People bitching about no checkpoints, when did you start playing games?

I swear to God, the amount of people I've seen and heard online bitching about GTA IV having no checkpoints give me the impression they didn't grow with old games, and I'm not talking about old NES games that were similar to roguelikes, but at least old GTA games.

Really, the more I read them the more I hate devs for including quality of life features that spoil modern gamers to the point that "getting good", something that used to be a badge of honor, is seen as something bad. And you know what's worse? GTA IV ain't hard! Not at all. I had to install mods to give me disadvantages because after playing the game for 15 years I wanted to try something different, not that I got bored, I can play the base game nonstop and not get bored.

I hear opinions.