The funny part about that statement, is my understanding of the international release of Lost Ark is that it's actually a lot friendlier than the original Korean version. You should really look into how Asian MMOs (especially Korean ones, and I think I've heard Chinese ones can be pretty bad too) work with monetization. This stuff is hardly new, and what we see internationally is generally tame in comparison. I remember almost 2 decades ago playing an international version of a Korean MMO (Dungeon Fighter Online) that had blatant "Buy this loot box to get cosmetics which give large stat buffs".

i spent $10k on a kickstarter game as far back as 2013, but i viewed it as an investment at the time. investing in the developers of the game being able to continue, as well as the assets maintained ~60-80% resale value for a time period. Sure it gave advantages in the game, but the game wasn't /designed/ around those advantages.

I think the part that's a relatively recent phenomenon is that games are designed with "free play" as an afterthought or even the game designed to push you away from it, instead of "free play" being the main design focus.

LA is a PC game, DI is a mobile game

The standards for the two are quite different.