You misunderstand. We are talking about two types of monetization.
Early days of gaming, the ACT of gaming wasn’t being monetized. The entry price was. This made development choices different.
Current stage of gaming, they monetize everything. The entry point, the crafting, the harvesting, the dress up game, they have to make artificial grinds so they can add in time saver options, or the laughable “battle pass” systems.
The whole design process changed because of it. Before design round tables never, and I mean never, had any sort of systems integration talk about how to monetize a game mechanic. It was ok where do we want the story to go, how do we want this to feel when they fight this boss, it was based on how the team felt they wanted the narrative to flow and game mechanics to feel for the end user. That was the art. Sure we had budgets, and we had milestones, and yes we wanted the games to make money, but its different and you know it.
Now, every decision made is how to squeeze a little more cash from your pocket and turn the finite amount of time you have on this earth, into a slow drip profit margin for the higher ups.