I think you have to ask yourself if the company is behaving ethically.
If a game is F2P but has microtransactions that arent P2W and the devs are continuing to maintain the game then its hard to be mad that they want to make some money off the basic game you get for free. (Mechwarrior online is a pretty good example of this)
If its a subscription, are you getting regular additional content for the money or is the subscription just allowing you to play the game you paid for? Do you still have to buy DLCs and pay subscription?
If its DLC, is it meaningful storylines/maps/characters? Does it make the prospect of another playthrough different or more interesting? Is it a reasonable price for what it gives you?
You make excellent points. Personally, I rarely have a problem paying for proper DLC (and buy proper DLC I mean, additional story content that wasn’t obviously cynically cut from the OG game). Notable past examples for GTA, stuff like ‘The Ballad of Gay Tony’ were amazing expansions.
Also sticking with GTA, they’re a good example of bad practice nowadays (imo). They pivoted to online-only DLC once they realised how lucrative a pay-to-play system can be when leveraged against not being bullied by players with more disposable income. There was amazing single-player content in dev for GTA5 and they cut it to focus on MP. Worse, they left the dregs of that content in the game, allowed a ‘GTA5 mystery’ concept to flourish and left people hunting for the mystery thinking they were going to find something like GTA4’s bigfoot. Knowing all along it didn’t exist. But of course, happy that people were still playing and hoping they would get bored and try online mode.
