I personally believe we are at the point of no return. Companies will push things as far as they can and once they push things too far they'll dial things back a bit, which at best will leave us in the same spot we are currently in.
The business is too established at this point (bit of a rant if you care to read):
You have streamers and content creators who essentially rely on buying VC to help drive their content. A lot of streamers have content on best builds overall, best builds for each position, best badges, best animations to equip, etc. Hard to do that without buying VC and, instead, spending time grinding. I don't know if people are interested in watching their favorite streamers grinding away for VC. One of the reasons I don't play these modes is because I have zero interest grinding for VC (especially if I already did in a previous 2k game), why would I want watch someone else do that?
The streamers could pivot to an anti-2k stance, but I don't know how sustainable that is, plus that could ruin their relationship with 2k, and I don't think any of them want to risk that.
A big issue that effects both streamers and average gamers is FOMO. That feeling of "if I don't buy VC I'm going to fall behind the other streamers/players. I need to keep up or be ahead of the pack." People might try to take a stance, but I what point do they cave because they aren't progressing as fast as those that invest more money and time into their player? It's almost like an addiction, "I'll just buy one VC pack and that's it!" And then people will make excuses for themselves, "there's a sale on VC? Ok I'll buy one more, but I'm done after that," "I only need X more VC to get where I want, I'll just pay for it and be done with it."
And bigger picture, it's going to take a lot more than people being mad at 2k for things to change. These practices are now the norm in gaming and younger gamers don't know a gaming world without DLC and microtransactions. There is countless data that shows customers of various games have no issue spending money year after year. For every person that complains about microtransactions and doesn't spend money on them, there are dozens (hundreds? thousands?) of other people that will continue to purchase such content.