Genshin Impact is an example of a game where the gameplay is intrinsically designed to facilitate the monetization though - it's taking what would be perfectly alright gameplay, and making it _really shitty_, so they can monetize.
A Genshin Impact that cost full price but had no 'original resin' garbage, no running the same boss a dozen times (but only 4 times a day unless you pay!) to 'ascend' a character, that didn't gate most of the actually effective characters behind gacha pulls, might actually be a decent game. Probably wouldn't have made as much money though.
Clearly most people aren't bothered by it as it's an extremely popular game that has remained popular months after release. If it was just a quick low quality cash grab people would have moved on, but they haven't. So you have to come to terms with the fact that reality is rejecting your particular perspective on the issue.
How do you know people haven't moved on? Have you got Genshin Impact analytics that the rest of us don't? It's free and getting lots of installs as you'd expect - how do you know if people are sticking with it?
It's a perfectly fine game for the first quite-a-few-hours and then suddenly turns into an appalling grindfest (and yes, the 'quality' is clearly front-loaded, the game drops off a cliff once you get to Liyue)
Does it seem like a game that's consistently getting millions of views on videos about each update is experiencing some kind of serious decline in popularity? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrH9vMZBwAk
That isn't a clear cut answer to the game being played, they can play it and not be happy with some of the games practices, we really don't know unless a study is done.
Anecdotally All of my friends who play games hate microtransactions and loot boxes. Some don't care if it's only cosmetic though.
Popularity doesn't mean that it's good or that the monetization is reasonable. I happen to have seen sales figures for one of the top slot machine apps on one of the major mobile app stores and their revenue was as good or better than GI.
If something is consistently popular it means enough people like it or aren't bothered by it enough to be a problem. The popularity of these games that you really don't like is a signal that your view of the world in regards to this issue is lacking and incomplete.
This only follows if the playerbase are expected to have full knowledge of the dark patterns at play but don't care about them. It's more likely they have no objection because they aren't aware.
A Genshin Impact that cost full price but had no 'original resin' garbage, no running the same boss a dozen times (but only 4 times a day unless you pay!) to 'ascend' a character, that didn't gate most of the actually effective characters behind gacha pulls, might actually be a decent game. Probably wouldn't have made as much money though.