The game industry was assaulted by the MBAs long ago. They have this financial concept of leaving money on the table. That if you aren't skinning your customers alive for all they have then you are losing money.

Then there was that infamous power point slide that got leaked where, basically, the plan is to use games to bring in audiences then use gambling techniques to hook on whales then cash them for eternity. Thus "live services games" were born.

It feels like uncreative, predatory shit because it is. It's a finance people idea, not a creative game developer idea.

Who buys them?

• People who dont game buying a present who just go "oh deluxe version, not that much more expensive, lets treat them"
• wealthy people that just pick the priciest option
• people with completitionist tendencies
• streamers and wannabe streamers for whom the extra cost is a trivial operating expense
• children and others that dont understand the value of a dollar
• people whose primary draw to the game is the photomode
• "i like game, I want more game therefore I pay more" (yes this logic is terrible when applied to microtransactions)

Who buys them?

Play Nice by Jason Schreier mentions that the "Pay to Win" style of monetization is very popular in Chinese markets.

I'd wager that, since other markets strongly oppose that, public companies focused on profits over player sentiment needed to find a middle ground. (That dichotomy is the main focus of the last half of the book)

We revolted when Battlefront 2 had loot boxes at the center of game progression, so companies hoping to make the most money in both markets need to make the purchasable items either purely cosmetic or only helpful in early game progression (starter packs).