Like I said “going through a few hoops”.
My suggestions are by no means communist or socialist, they are full on capitalist.
For a coop game you need players. Players are content. For players to be content you need player retention. For players to stay they need things to do. In order to give them things to do you release content for free, in order to maintain players so DLC purchasers have people to play with. People giving you money will keep giving you money because they have people to play with.
It’s the basic economy of any successful f2p title, which translates very well to VT2 since after the initial Buy-In there’s no reason for them not to utilise the good parts of f2p economics.
And it goes further than that. By monetizing cosmetics your “f2p” playerbase see all the fancy stuff the buyers have, which incentives them to go and purchase stuff, feeding the economy etc. etc. etc. effectively turning “buyers” in to walking ads inside your game, which prods others to follow.