Sadly, microtransactions are how you make money these days. Remedy made 40million with this latest one and calling it their greatest success, but it's a fraction of the 24 billion that went into mtx only on pc this past year. Remedy is also much smaller then EA/Ubi and iirc privately owned, so the secret sauce may instead be good game + small overhead + no shareholders demanding infinite money.

Edit: i stand corrected, Remedy is publicly listed.