A better analogy: imagine if someone built a public water fountain, then chess.com set up next to it selling the exact same water for $100/year while limiting the public fountain to 1 cup per day through lobbying. Then they sponsored all the popular hydration influencers to only drink their bottled water on camera.
> Cause you can just go to a bar and get it for free.
Not at the same convenience, can you ;) So they are selling convenience. Chess.com isn't selling convenience - both platforms are websites you access identically. They're not offering portability or solving a distribution problem. They're artificially limiting a digital service that costs them essentially nothing to provide unlimited access to.