I think the problem is that we have to have $100M games - or bust. There is very little funding available for those "less than blockbuster" titles.
Even with predatory monetization it is extremely hard to recoup costs caused by such budget - there is a market for only so many Worlds of Warcrafts or similar long running games where the huge costs can be amortized over millions of players and years of subscriptions.
If you don't build the game around the "AAA" assumption that requires you to ship (and have made!) hundreds of gigabytes of artwork, scripting and what not, then a lot of these monetization pressures go away - unless your producer pushes to put it back in, because, hey, free money!
Even with predatory monetization it is extremely hard to recoup costs caused by such budget - there is a market for only so many Worlds of Warcrafts or similar long running games where the huge costs can be amortized over millions of players and years of subscriptions.
If you don't build the game around the "AAA" assumption that requires you to ship (and have made!) hundreds of gigabytes of artwork, scripting and what not, then a lot of these monetization pressures go away - unless your producer pushes to put it back in, because, hey, free money!