Only legislation will stop this.
Nothing inside a video game should cost money. Games make you value arbitrary nonsense. That is what makes them games. Developers are being told to invent new forms of bullshit that cost the company nothing and don’t feel like the same old lootboxes everyone finally recognized are a scam. It’s still just lootboxes. You are being manipulated into throwing unlimited sums of money at a game you already own just so it will function, as a game.
There is no ethical form of that. It’s an abuse for free money. You were never going to shop your way out of it. Boycotts don’t work, here. So long as they gouge one sucker in ten, your nonparticipation counts for nothing. You will be subject to the restraint, addiction, and frustration that coerced them, until you cough up more money to briefly enjoy the fun version of the game that is being kept from you out of abject greed.
If we allow this to continue, there will be nothing else.
Abusive business models have no place in the market.
Stop treating “this is literally a scam” like it has a damn thing to do with what’s in the game part of a game. Nobody’s coming to censor your precious vidya. This is about the money.