Anyone that thinks you can get $100k worth of value out of this game is crazy in my eyes. One guy that did ended up bricking the game for himself, making it impossible to queue for PvP, which meant the immortals on his server couldn't compete when the time came because he could never finish his initiation and he couldn't pass leadership to anyone else due to the bug. After dropping an entire mortgage on the game, blizzard couldn't be bothered to respond despite his best efforts over a month of raising awareness and using his influence as a content creator to bring additional attention to the threads/tweets. It wasn't until the news media took the story and ran with it that blizzard cared because it was hurting the games image.
In the end, all it really got him is the same thing you could earn in any other game in the genre totally for free, or at least after buying the game if necessary.
I spent a fraction of a fraction of what he did on another ARPG, Path of Exile, and you know what it got me?
I got to spend time with the devs IRL, had a private dinner at a Brazilian steakhouse with them and many VIP guests and content creators from the community, including meeting David Brevik the creator of Diablo himself. They even
signed some cards for me as a souvenir.
I got to design an
item that is permanently in the game, with help from the artists and developers to create and balance it.
A closet half full of branded T-shirts, hoodies, jackets. A binder full of artist signed concept art, developer signed merchandise. More unique in-game cosmetics than I could possibly use in a years worth of seasons, all of which are no longer available even if someone did want them.
It also got me a VIP ticket to their own convention called ExileCon which was actually about the fans and meeting the developers one-on-one, getting excited about the game and bonding over our enjoyment over it. Unlike the advertisement hell that was Blizzcon, where there was next to zero socializing and no chance to actually talk to devs outside of Q&A panels.
And none of it ruined the balance of the game for other players. At no point was I strong armed into giving them money, everything about the gameplay itself is totally free. Myself as a player, my time, and my money were all treated with respect. I wasn't smashed in PvP by someone I had no chance against because they dropped more money, I didn't run into timers or limitations that could only be paid to get around, I wasn't tempted to gamble on a lose-lose outcome, nothing about those strategies is good for gaming industry because it puts us in the sights for legislation/laws to be passed that could have detrimental effects because they don't understand the space like we do.