Ah. The "I'll just tolerate this until it gets worse" mindset. Never backfires!

Surely even you can admit that slipping this in on release was a scummy move.

It's "theoretical" only because there is no non-monetised version. They could have created a cheat shop with the items for free. Even if you choose not to use them having that option means it is a better experience, so it would still be a "diminished experience".

If someone can pay extra money to get a different game experience from you then the publishers have denied you the chance at that experience which is "diminished".

This isn't even mentioning the performance issues on lunch that would be tolerated because "surely they'll fix it later!".

Sure you don't care. Many people don't care. And surely someone is going to try and highlight this apathy as a virtue somehow. And so publishers get to continue experimenting with how to milk franchises for every dollar it can instead of making an optimal game experience, overall making the game industry worse.