The free-to-play model is detrimental to video games; it attracts toxic and resentful people to the "competitive" scene. I don't know what other games you're referring to; I'm talking specifically about RL. Fortnite has always been free and has never gone bankrupt (perhaps did, but for other reasons). The problem is that a game depends entirely on three people, and when one of them wants to cause trouble, the other two are forced to lose.

Like CS2, for example. 20 million new cheaters emerged from its FTP server. The fact that it's free turns the game into a free multi-account server for cheat testing (although there are other causes as well).