So, if microtransactions are used by already profitable companies, then they are being greedy and exploitative. And if microtransactions are used by companies to stay profitable, it's just because they planned it that way and they are greedy and exploitative. This reads a lot like either shifting the goal posts or just reframing any evidence to fit a predetermined judgment.
Not that I'm saying you are specifically making this argument, it just seems like a lot of people are avoiding discussing specifics or data and working really hard to find ways to discount any specifics or data that they don't like.
This all begins from the claim that MTX is necessary to the success and continued profitability of video game companies.
If MTX are being used by companies that don't really need the money to pad out margins for their investors, then they're taking advantage of their customers and looking for more ways to expand their capital. Therefore, MTX is not necessary in the sense that it is not rescuing the business from bankruptcy or any such thing. In many ways, this is the nature of all capitalistic endeavors: there is always a need for more space and more profit because that is literally the thing that drives the company's motives. They have to find new ways to get revenue out of their labor. Whether they need it or not, expansion into this territory is just another way companies increase the bottom line. This is rightly critiqued by tons of people from tons of different angles. One response to this model might be, "why does the bottom line always have to increase and why does that bottom line get moved upward, to CEOs, in a way that is mathematically disproportionate to the rest of the company?" There are other responses, of course, but to think that "this is just the way things are" is to be ignorant of alternate economic models, alternate hierarchies for running a business entity, and ignorant of history generally where the development of industrial economies is concerned.
If companies
do need MTX because they themselves have designed their business model that way, then they're in a hole they dug for themselves. And they are, simultaneously, taking advantage of their customers. Plenty of companies have survived without MTX. If they feel they need it, there's a good chance they have allocated resources in such a way that a new revenue source was deemed necessary. This is sort of Finance 101: budgets, business models, and goals are set by executives, not derived from a magical formula that dictates a specific revenue stream is necessary. This could result from any number of variables, among them disproportionate payment to executives, poor management of time resources, poor working conditions and unrealistic timelines, greedy board members expecting exorbitant returns on their investments based on market variables that may have nothing to do with the video game industry, and so forth.
No goal posts have been moved, there is no pre-determined judgement. This is all based on how companies function, what we know about their operations, and about the gap between the way they sell things to investors and their audience vs. the way it plays out in terms of people's well-being, salaries, benefits, job security, and so on. The two readings of the use of MTX are endemic to one another.
