That's possibly part of the issue. But OP was always a thing, and always was official only. We're more aware of it, but I'm not certain *that* many more people are playing organized play.
I think three things had the strongest impact on homebrew:
1) The rise of official 3rd Party stuff during 3e
2) The wealth of official options during 3e
3 The rise of "balance"
Balance was the big one. Suddenly, things were either balanced or unbalanced and it was much more obvious what was good homebrew vs bad. Prior to 3e there was some element of "balance" but it was much more fluid. Designing good homebrew was harder.
This is paired with all the 3PP, which really introduced many people to bad products. The idea that there wasn't some minimum standard of quality and you couldn't necessarily trust a product to be good.
Added into this drama was the myriad of options which made it less necessary to homebrew. If you wanted to play certain things in 2e you simply had to homebrew. You didn't in 3e: you just needed to find the right book. And it was a simple matter to find options you wanted to play: it was easier to base a character around the options available than find options that fit the character.
The internet and even piracy likely made a difference as well. If you wanted an option in 1e or 2e and didn't have the book, finding out where that option would be could be tricky, and getting a copy of that exact book was hard. Then it was a Google search or eBay/Amazon purchase away. You were more aware of what options were out there.
And even if you didn't want to buy the book, it was possible to get the options through a PDF. Not having an unlimited gaming budget was less of an obstacle. It was easily to track down an illegal copy of a warrior prestige class than it was to design your own...
Spinning out of that, I think a lot of DMs pushed back against the options. Because there was so much power creep in the game, it became desirable to get "back to basics" and focus on just the core rulebooks. I saw several DMs doing a PHB only campaign, with even official material requiring a stamp of approval.
Yes. This.
My personal experience has never had DMs that allowed homebrew or 3pp.
I started playing in 4E. None of us had ever played before, including the DM. Heck, we had a TPK (caused by the DM trying to homebrew Zergs from Starcraft) at around level 5 and I suddenly found myselfas the new DM about 3 months into playing the game.
I never would have even considered asking for homebrew, especially not as a player. I was handed the book. These were the rules. And there were plenty of options. More than I could ever play. Why would I need to go through the trouble of making my own and getting it right? My character ideas are flexible enough that I don't need to plead special snowflake. "Please, DM, take your precious time to make a game just for me!"
Then I played Encounters. Obviously official material only. Still way more options than I could think to play.
When I couldn't play Encounters anymore because of time (around the time the playtest started) I joined a Pathfinder campaign. It was Core only. As Jester David mentioned, the common theme is that even a lot of official stuff is broken (and 3.5 was worse, I hear). I certainly see a lot of this now that I play Pathfinder Society (again, official only). I have trouble imagining DMing for PFS (maybe a Core Campaign module). Hard enough to get all the rules right with just Core.
Right now, I currently DM for a group of college students who have never RPed before, much less played D&D. I don't even give them the option of SCAG. They had enough trouble with variant human.
Even playing on EN World, the first thing DMs do is say what is allowed. They don’t say, "Give me some homebrew monster you created and I will make time to evaluate it."
If I don't have the time to write my own adventures (this week I barely prepped by just reading through the first chapter of the adventure (where am I going to find time to give 3PP or homebrew the proper attention and consideration it needs to not wreck things? Not to mention I find a lot of the homebrew material to be covered just fine with official material, and it seems the content is being put out just because they feel the need to put it out, bot because something was missing from the game. If people criticize WOTC for putting out splat, why do we want more?
So no, I don't really appreciate the BadWrongFun vibe I'm getting from this thread because I would rather dedicate my efforts to story, or learning the published adventure well, and not crafting the monster, race, or class of the week for special snowflakes. I don't find that enjoyable.
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). These were products that entered the gaming zeitgheist to the same degree that some of the official books have. Things like Rappan Athuk or Freeport, or Ptolus were very, very popular and widely used.
