I’m aware of some DOS games that did it. For example 1989 Prince of Persia had you enter the exact character (page, line, word) from the manual.
On PS1 you’d probably never complete Metal Gear Solid (1998), cause you need to call somebody on the codec, but the frequency was on the box cover.
I’m pretty sure most regular users will not even notice the charge, and find it useful down the line. Cause one day they will mess something up, complain to MS that they “lost their work”, will be pointed to the cloud where everything was synced, and rejoice. Most users don’t really care about the implications that their documents are in the cloud.