It isn't that wild; the typical name for it is anti-rollback, and you probably have at least one device that implements it. Most Android devices have anti-rollback efuses to prevent installing older versions of the bootchain\bootloader; they might still allow you to downgrade the OS (depends on the vendor, if memory serves). Instead of using efuse counters, anti-rollback counters can also be implemented by Replay Protected Memory Block (RPMB), which is implemented by many flash storage (eMMC often supports RPMB, but other storage types can as well). It is possible to implement anti-rollback mechanisms on x86_64 by utilizing a TPM [0], but as far as I know, only Chrome OS does this.
[0]: https://www.chromium.org/developers/design-documents/tpm-usa...