In fairness, when it does work, it's basically free money. Lots of it, for a long time. So it's not surprising why so many publishers throw millions at developing them.
You're right though, the ratio of successes vs failures isn't great, and a failed GaaS at this level isn't cheap to write off.
I understand why so many developers and publishers want to go this route. But to compete in that market, you have to spend a ton of time and money in development. For example, Suicide Squad has been in development for like 8 years now, which might possibly be 9 years by the time it's released. Beyond Good & Evil 2 seems like it's also going to be a GaaS and it has been in development for, what, like 14 years now? And the reason for these bloated development times? In my opinion, it's because all GaaS games are basically going for the same audience, that likes "shoot, shoot, shoot, numbers go up, find new gun, shoot, shoot, shoot, bigger numbers go up, repeat" gameplay, so your game has to be so good that it's able to peal GaaS gamers away from their GaaS of choice, which they may have already sunk hundreds of hours, and dollars, into. But these fuckheads execs don't seem to recognize that and ignore the extinction level financial damage these games can do if they fail.
Just imagine what Rocksteady could have done in the last 8 years with the same money? They probably could've released two to three Batman or, if the rumors are true, Superman games. And each one would have been profitable. But instead, profitable isn't good enough. According to the corporate suits, games have to be a decade long revenue stream that will bump up stock prices. So when I say this industry needs a crash, this is why. AAA gaming, at least, has become corporatized and thus has to chase trends. We need to get back to the era of small developers making videogames because they love videogames (think Hideo Kojima, Hidetaka Miyazaki, the founders of Bioware, the original Id, Warren Spector, etc.).
My ire at this game in particular is that it represents everything wrong with AAA gaming and it needs to be killed to teach gaming execs a lesson.