It is still a monetary investment which is a major deterrent to bad faith accounts. This is why so many live games have a "you need to spend 1 dollar to get into the good queue" model. Shit like Escape from Tarkov where people buy accounts en masse are very much the exception.

But also? The issue is, like with mots things, lower income users. A lot of the cheaper/more affordable "pay as you go" phone plans won't support the SMS authentication services that these models depend on. Which is why I referenced Overwatch 2 since that was actually a really "good" example of the reasons this is not a good model.