

Tbh it’s more the getting users to gamble by paying for cases that got the ball rolling. Objectively, the least terrible monetization form is buying a game outright and then earning your items through playing as they used to do before free to play became normalized. That’s why all these shitty games come out with battle passes even though game developers did just fine supporting their game for a few years without the constant money churn. Because it’s the norm, people now think it’s impossible to have a game with updates that is bought outright, yet deep rock galactic does it just fine without $60/yr worth in battle passes.
Thing is they’ll then just miss those games or be accused of abusing its market position to be anticompetitive, but I think in general these publishers are getting that we don’t want stupid launchers/extra logins. It happened with 2k and it’s good it’s happening with Sony. Honestly I check before I buy any game if the store mentions a third party account now because that’s so annoying. Especially origin- they are awful and their business is awful.