I think it is worse than that, they know what they're saying, but i fully believe there's an agenda to push the idea that all videogames have to be live service, that's the reason why articles like "Elden/Palworld/Hogwarts Legacy lost 90% of players!" exist, to push the idea that gamers only need to play 3 o 4 games for their entire lives, and of course to make expend all their money in all kinds of microtransactions in the meantime.
There's people in the industry who loathe the idea of making a game that players only have to pay for once, so they'll try push live services as much as they can, even if most people don't really like them.