The thing that ultimately limits this strategy is people get far more excited about paying up-front for a "thing" that is play-oriented, whether it's marketed a

The thing that ultimately limits this strategy is people get far more excited about paying up-front for a "thing" that is play-oriented, whether it's marketed as a professional tool or a game. When you lead with monetization, you have to actively cut out regions of play so that feedback loops related to monetization can dominate. With F2P microtransactions in the context of a single player game(multiplayer adds social value effects), the hope is, essentially, that people are too uninformed to take control of their own play experiences. Everyone who would consider themselves a games enthusiast essentially lives in a different world - even if they're addicts, they know how to satisfy their addiction at lower cost, and often with more ability to customize the experience.