You guys are entitled to your opinions and no opinion is wrong. But I disagree with you. I always like when I see other AVNs mentioned in a game. I liked the convo between MC and Ruth when they were mentioned. The games mentioned are simply games/devs he has respect for and he wanted to pay homage to them.
There is nothing wrong with paying respect/homage to other games and other games.
Having said that, for me at least it just came off as a bit jarring cause there were a lot of name dropping (I think at least 7? 8 other AVNs get named dropped here iirc?) with the frequency.
An example I'll cite is what happened between PhillyGames (dev for City of Broken Dreamers) & HopesGaming (dev for The DeLuca Family).
Both devs like each others' games and have interacted with one another over the years.
So what did they do?
PhillyGames created a very minor character named "Hope" which is an AI in Broken Dreamers with limited dialogue.
To respond in kind, HopesGaming also created a very minor character called "Philly" who is a Doctor with the DeLucas.
I asked HopesGaming about it & his reply was "We wanted our references to be subtle & ambiguous, and didn't wish for these references to be distracting."
The subtlety of it doesn't take players' attention away from the game, while those aware of both of these games' devs get that reference.
I quite liked what they both did there. And I do think the whole Speedster maid being cameo from from another game from Office Perks is kinda cool (even though I never played Office Perks, and only heard about it from someone mentioning it in this thread).
For the rest though? Not so much.
But it is what it is (shrugs).
As you said, there's no wrong opinions, and honestly? When I first mentioned the whole "too much references" point in my original post about the update, I expected myself to be in minority in that opinion.
So different strokes for different folks.