I think it is worse actually. Tokens in a game are usually just purchased for enjoyment in the game. They are purchased as a part of your entertainment budget, not expected to be useful in any way.

LLMs are fundamentally tools intended to be useful. But LLM vendors don’t understand their systems well enough to actually price the product people are trying to buy (for example, the actual product of a coding model is the code that it produces, not the tokens, which are just an internal mechanical process involved in the creation of the code). Token based pricing is that lack of understanding leaking out of the organization that ought to be responsible for it, and being dropped on the user.

Imagine if we made cars like this! You’d go to the car dealer and ask for a car. They’d bring you a pile of parts, charge you for them, and try to put them together in front of you. You’d go back and forth for a bit, rephrase where you want the steering wheel, etc. Some of the parts wouldn’t fit but you’d be invited to pay for replacements as well. In the end you’d either have a car or not, that’s your problem.