They do understand to a point. The people who were fans of the original Prince of Persia games have carried what has until very recently become something of a lackluster franchise. That they remained fans is important and speaks to the world they came from which wasn’t subscription based.

Either Ubisoft was hoping that they’d win those fans back with this game (and get new players invested as well), or they were hoping an entire new cohort of gamers from the newer generations would pick this game up (and the newer generations are into micro transactions but also find them to be divisive). That older cohort of gamers really really don’t like micro transactions.

Just because something bad has arrived doesn’t mean that people will continue to put up with it.