All I’m commenting on, as a game design researched and professor, is that it’s an established term in a discipline which means something else to those actually within the discipline. These are still patterns, and they can absolutely be harmful patterns, but the terminology is being overloaded and there is some interesting nuance within it.

Also, just to comment on the last quip there, and yes - to those I’ve spoken to, they are okay with those because they (being actively involved in the industry) know more than most people to educate and supervise and ensure that playing games with these patterns doesn’t turn into harmful behaviours. They also call them out for what they are - often, very bad design.

I guess that’s really the line they drew - these patterns are more gray than the examples they presented. Most are good sometimes and terrible other times depending on how it is used. The term “dark patterns” as used professionally refers to always bad, always deceptive, always harmful. I do like having that line, even if it means the dark side is a much smaller subset of the greater space, then you can easily say, “If this uses a single dark pattern, it’s out. If it uses a lot of ‘grey’ patterns, be cautious. If it’s nothing but grey patterns, it’s purely abusive trash.”