Wait, in what world is a subscription a "rational consumer purchasing decision" where buying characters for a fighting game if you want them as they come out is not?
I would prefer to pay for in-game content of any kind, cosmetics included, over paying a subscription for a game. Any day. Especially if the content is characters, as is the case in LoL or Street Fighter.
And yeah, I bought three 3D Street Fighter games. And a bunch of characters for each. Even a costume or two. I am extremely on board with that. Money extremely well spent, as far as I'm concerned.
Hell, the SF6 community at the moment is begging for more cosmetics. They just announced a handful of horny-ass swimsuit costumes and people went ballistic. It's not my bag, but if people like them and they know what they're buying who the hell are you to tell them they're wrong, let alone that it should be illegal?
I mean, it's a straightforward enough transaction. You think bikini Cammy with tan lines is hot and will pay some money for that skin. I get subsidized by your teenage hormones and keep playing the game I like. Win/win in my book.
That's the problem with this train of thought. There's some stuff where you and I agree there are bad practices and we can probably agree on some common sense regulation for them. But if you're going to come at me with a maximalist approach that boils down to "games I don't like shouldn't exist" we're going to disagree.
Which, if nothing else, is a good reason for regulation of creative products to be relatively loose whenever possible. I was not on board with Hillary wanting to ban Mortal Kombat in the 90s because she didn't like hearts being ripped out and I'm not on board with people wanting to ban free to play games now. It made sense to have age ratings in the 90s and it makes sense to have that and other common sense regulations now.