Exactly this. It's bad enough if it's free, you are the product. But if you pay, it definitely must not be this way. That's the worst form of capitalism in tech.
Microsoft has IOS and Android envy. They've been trying unsuccessfully to make Windows store successful like their mobile counterparts but they keep picking the wrong reasons for their continuous failures.
I've used the "Microsoft account" since windows 8 without benefit. I still had to to manually sign-in to the store, the store was super slow, apps would not install for random reasons, it'd ask me to relogin at random times, the store couldn't automatically check if the internet connection was restored, the store would give meaningless windows-esk error codes, no side loading of store apps was possible, I still had to login to Microsoft owned apps even though I'd logged in to the OS, store apps are aliens - look different from normal apps and many shortcuts keys don't work, they randomly close.
Basically, the store has / had issues. People will willingly add their emails if there's a benefit to doing so.