As for your prediction, I think you're sadly spot-on. There will always be enough whales to make it worthwhile to pander to them, and milking them will be essential for any company that cares more about making money than about making a good game.
Hate all you want, "pay to win" model works for extracting as much value as you can from each user. Same concept as Tesla artificially reducing mile range. I heard from someone working in a game studio about a "whale" user spending $1M dollars on microtransactions for a mobile game.
Take for example removing the Cancel button from the sign up screen, 5-10% bump in sign ups, etc. (Eventually Apple made us 'fix' this)
Generally, the only time a minorly annoying UX affects you negatively is when the platform penalizes it, like the notifications prompt on iOS, if they don't agree the first time you ask, you have to make the user to into settings to enable it. So generally you put your own prompt in before the system prompt, else users might deny the request.
It would be morally presumptuous on my part to say that what I find to be annoying is not what they prefer.
It's like clickbait listicles, they get written because they work.
If changing the UX results in a significant change in behavior, that actually suggests--I mean, "logic dictates" you've taken away an option that a significant number of people preferred so much they used it when it was available.
Think about it this way: Given the choice of watching channel A or channel B or turning off the TV, I choose turning off the TV. If you take away that choice, I'll choose the lesser of the two remaining evils. That does not mean I prefer not having the choice to turn off the TV.
Post-facto rationalization is just that. Users are not expressing a preference for dark patterns.
You're using a medical science to manipulate people so you can make money. You're disgusting.
Removing a cancel button or publishing a listicle is hardly a false dichotomy, you can close the app, you can not click on it.
Users love anti-patterns which is why they frequent businesses that engage in them, rather than choose another business that doesn't. I had your inclinations too when I started making them, I protested that this would lead to various bad outcomes which didn't happen. None, zero, nada. Sign ups went up, traffic went up, etc.
Dude have you ever considered the plethora of other reasons users may choose a platform/service with 'dark pattern' over others, such as that platform/service being more feature rich or having a greater utility to that user? You are deluding yourself thinking your anti-patterns make a difference in the end. Sure signups may go up, but user engagement will surely drop off if the experience is crap or hostile after onboarding. Your sign up flow is just one small portion of a user's journey in your platform/app.
It leaves me thinking that maybe melodramatic wailing on Reddit is secretly a big part of the fun.
Is the problem that EA has some sort of moral obligation to introduce only the kinds of game mechanics that a specific set of people enjoys, and anyone who responds to (and, apparently, is willing to pay a whole lot of money for) different game mechanics can go jump in a lake?
Gambling isn't really my cup of tea, either. But I suppose I also shouldn't be surprised if I were to go to one and discover that some portion of the people there are loudly complaining about what a rip off everything is, but not actually leaving the casino to go find something else to do.
That's the problem with these lootboxes, given how fast they spread to every AAA games these days (including single player games where they hardly make sense in the first place) it's obvious that the maths work out for them. The amount of principled gamers ending up not buying the game is probably more than compensated by the dividends of microtransactions. There are not enough gamers who care enough about the issue to stop buying the game. The marketing and network effect is simply too strong. A mob downvoting a comment on reddit won't change anything, it's nothing but slacktivism. Might as well sign an e-petition at this point.
It's not the first time it's like this. "We don't want always online DRM! We won't buy your game!", "We want to be able to host our own dedicated servers for multiplayer! We won't buy your game!". And now it's the new normal, hardly anybody expects these things from new releases or even mentions them. Lootboxes and microtransactions are headed down the same path IMO.
Here's my prediction: five years from now every big release will contain microtransactions one way or an other and nobody will find it surprising or inappropriate.