Personally, I fear the opposite, that over-regulation of rapidly changing industries based on fear and anecdata will make people's lives worse.
I left the industry in part because of these trends and I won't be letting my own kids play these types of games. I don't know that regulation is the answer (and I'm generally anti regulation) but I do think there's a real problem here.
There's a lot to be said that its easier to attract 1000 people and extract $500 from 10 of them than it is to get 5 bucks from all of them. Even more so when you add piracy to the mix.
Would these strategies have been a thing if so many people didn't flip their shit because a near AAA level game tried to charge a few bucks?
Yes, since AAA Studios want all the money they can possibly get. Thus we'd always end with them trying to squeeze every last penny they can get out of their customers. And predatory tactics seem to work best for that.
I can't help but think you're purposefully trying to obscure that point.
I have spent some money on doom, counterstrike, quake, unreal or even chess. Or none on games like tremulous. I've spent a lot of time in these games, I've found friends in this games that I by now know for more than a decade.
A lot of that is gone with modern match making, and modern match making is made worse with transactions. Because you need to funnel more people into the matchmaking grinder.