The thing that I find so disturbing about all this is that it does away with the notion of providing value for value. These game companies are not trying to make the best game possible for their customers, they are trying to manipulate and deceive their customers.
How do you reconcile earning money with giving them "the best game possible" for free? Donationware never worked, so you have to hold something back from them that you monetize. And you have to make sure that thing is desirable.
Of course some developers are going to be gross when doing that, but it is absurd to extrapolate that all F2P games are manipulative and deceiving. If even in the most visible, sophisticated and successful examples of the genre, a huge percentage of people are playing for months without paying a dime, you can't honestly say that the primary element that defines the game is "deceiving and manipulative".
No matter how much technique is put into the monetization design of a game, NOBODY is going to pay if they are not having a good time and being entertained.
