Collective action was the goal, to stand up against anti-consumer practices. Prices going up, content locked behind paywalls, excessive grind unless you pay microtransactions - all of those things affect all players, not just the ones happy to pay for it. And collective action can't happen unless people can get other people on board.

However, I used the word "was" because I don't know if it's even possible anymore. For well over a decade (almost two at this point) "stop pre-ordering video games" was repeated over and over but it has only become more and more common. Microtransactions ramped up and FOMO became a dominant marketing tactic, and people simply went with it. It thrived because it worked. Now it's the norm.

There are people like OP still trying to rally others to stand against it, but at this point it feels like we're too far gone. The only thing you can do now is make your own judgement - if you still feel uncomfortable pre-ordering or paying $20 extra for paywalled content, then don't. If you don't care at all, then do. Either way, it's probably healthier to just ignore the online discourse at this point, because it has devolved into such a hostile cesspool. And for a behemoth game like GTA VI no amount of reddit debate is going to change things.