Honest question: I understand the gripes about lootboxes being toxic because gambling systems are generally manipulative, but I don't know how to respond to "Just don't buy them". They don't affect gameplay, they're really just there as whale bait, but if you're invested in the game you don't necessarily have to get invested in cosmetics.
The only two games I play these days both happen to be gacha games, and actually I see a lot less complaints about the toxicity of these luck-based systems in those communities. Maybe it's because they're more used to them, maybe it's because most other gacha games include pity systems, but it seems weird to me that the most vocal complaints are over systems with no bearing on gameplay when gacha games limit free access to new characters and, by extension, progress.
This opinion might vary by the person and the game. I was playing some free-to-play game the other day which was like you described - it had a store and some tokens, and a way to slowly gain the premium token as you played.
But I found there to be something deeply gross about it which did impact my gameplay experience. I’m playing a game (rather than doing something else) because I want a curated experience of fun. Tokens like this make the relationship adversarial. In this case, the game has some mechanics which it keeps waving in your face - “quick! Click now to spend 2 whatevers to have a 4 hour boost!” And I have to actively avoid the shiny fun part because it costs real money to do. It makes the experience tiring in the same way shopping is tiring. Is the game trying to be fun or not? Pick a lane.
That said, I enjoyed Dota2 for many years even though it had hat stores and loot boxes full of art. I’m not sure what the difference is - I think I just never really had to resist the pull to pull out my credit card in dota. And I payed way more as a result! I chipped in a few dollars each year for the international prize pool, and that was a blast.
The difference is that the game was competitive and the cosmetics had 0 impact on the game mechanics itself. Other games like you describe constantly remind you that you don't have enough credits to buy the thing, you're earning them just at a rate too slow to matter. You're always being nudged to think about the mtx system and it's a core aspect of the gameplay and it's exhausting.
For me it makes a game feel like a second job. I'm not wealthy so I'm trying to save and make something for myself but playing these games just feels like experience the same dread and fear i have in reality.
If you only care about yourself, sure - "just don't buy them" is a good answer. The problem comes when you look at the industry level, at the games that get allowed to be made, and at the people they hurt.
The vast majority of "free to play" games would not be able to make a profit of they didn't find a few players willing to spend huge amounts of money on them. Thousands of dollars, from people who often can't afford to spend thousands of dollars on a hobby.
And not only are these games sustained by such people, they actively seek to find and exploit them, with game mechanics and presentation designed to hook a certain kind of psyche - people with gambling or other mental issues, and children.
1) "Whales" keep nearly all of these games going. "Vote with your wallet" is a misnomer because in typical democratic systems a vote is a vote; but capitalism isn't a democracy and a very small portion of the playerbase will actually sustain the game near-singlehandedly. Its not a situation where enough people don't buy it and the game company changes; its a situation where enough people don't buy it, and are missing out on a piece of the game due to not buying it, while the elite 0.1% buy everything.
2) "They don't alter gameplay". That's an interesting argument. Take a game like Animal Crossing; would being able to buy a sweet ass new table for your house "alter gameplay"? Isn't aesthetic the gameplay? I truly and deeply believe that its difficult to draw this line in any game; where the "gameplay" stops and suddenly the "stuff that doesn't matter so sell it" starts; if the product has value, such that people buy it, then it must be an important part of the game. It may not affect the competitive balance, but that isn't the entire game; the developers put time into the visual aesthetic of the game, and to assert that the items are ok to sell simply because they don't affect the gameplay trivializes the items' importance.
Moreover, in a much smaller way; in every game I've played, these items do affect competitive balance. Often in subtle ways. In Valorant, having a cool gun skin can often mean eight year olds on your team asking for you to buy the gun for them, so they can use it (sometimes, promising a re-buy in return, then not doing it lol). In Apex Legends, some hero outfits legitimately camouflage you with the environment than others. In Dead By Daylight, the Feng Ming wearing the bright pink jacket will be tunneled by the killer more than everyone else wearing drab browns and torn jeans. To assert "the way you look doesn't impact the gameplay" is trivially and wholly, if not sometimes subtly, incorrect; games are visual, looking good asserts a socioeconomic power structure which can impact team cooperation, all of this does matter.
But, to clarify; gaming companies need to make money. For online service games, its not enough to just sell the game for $70 and call it good for life; even doing so can be a death sentence for the game, as the barrier to entry is so high no one joins in to even play. Loot boxes are extremely bad, and games which sell them should be held to the same legal standards as gambling (Overwatch, Apex Legends, Rocket League, DOTA2, CS:GO, etc). A cash-for-item storefront is better (Fortnite, Valorant, Warzone, Dead by Daylight, Sea of Thieves, Halo Infinite, etc). Battle Passes are probably one of the best solutions I've seen yet; they're effectively an optional subscription service to the game, with resetting progression (players love progression). Pure subscription services are rare, but also a great solution; CS:GO has one, but WoW was the better example; there was a time when you simply paid to play, and everything cool you could get was bundled into that subscription. Today, things have changed, and they're double-dipping revenue models, like most of the games listed above.
I don't think "just don't buy them" is meant as a wallet vote here. It looks more like a prompt to spend your resources on things you enjoy rather than things you don't enjoy. There is as far as I can tell no shortage of PC games that you only have to pay for once. I have hundreds of games on just my Steam account, of which only a handful will ask for change for some hats or whatever; things I deemed irrelevant to my enjoyment when I got them.
I only play Dota and no other game and I think how the game works is extremely fair. It's free to play. For all. Can you believe that? And it only charges you for skins that have no competitive edge. How is that not fair? I mean there's not a single dark ui pattern to trick you into doing it.
The only two games I play these days both happen to be gacha games, and actually I see a lot less complaints about the toxicity of these luck-based systems in those communities. Maybe it's because they're more used to them, maybe it's because most other gacha games include pity systems, but it seems weird to me that the most vocal complaints are over systems with no bearing on gameplay when gacha games limit free access to new characters and, by extension, progress.