Abuse harms in many ways.
A casino taking advantage of a gambling addict is abusive, even without any threat of bodily harm or outward coercion.
So, too, is a video game if it knowingly and willingly affects the emotional or mental well-being of a player in a negative way. Mechanics designed to get players to play more hours than is healthy, or spend more money than is wise, are abusive in this manner; it’s exactly the same as a cigarette company claiming no responsibility for the potential harm(s) of their product(s) just because their customers “willingly participate.”
You are right, of course, that at this point the key distinction between the types of domestic violence you outline and the abusive, commercial relationships many in your playerbase probably experience (at least to some degree) is criminality,—rarely do cigarette makers or gacha-game-devs go to jail—but that doesn’t make the underlaying power structures at play any more dissimilar or less problematic.
And denying, minimizing, or otherwise dismissing the concerns of others is a classic means of maintaining control, by the way—it’s similar to gaslighting, in that it’s meant to invalidate the abused’s position and replace it with the abuser’s.
I’m not saying that Gems of War has a responsibility to be the Wokest-game-on-Earth or that any Dev should go to jail for creating it.
But I am saying I, as a player, would have appreciated the community liaison to, at the very least, entertain the notion set forth by one of the more vocal members of its community rather than dismiss it out-of-hand in, what seemed to me, to be an uglier-than-necessary fashion.
Batman’s the hero Gotham needs, not the one it deserves. We as players don’t deserve Batman—we’re complainers who never appreciate anything and constantly gripe and snipe—but we need you to be Batman, regardless, Salty.
Otherwise, chaos reigns 