Wait... Shouldn't it be the opposite? Paying for the game should make you more reticent to being an ass because losing access to it means you've lost money.
I believe men's cognitive biases predispose them to seeing the fact they've spent money as justifying some sort of entitlement. To such people, getting justice for perceived slights is worth burning everything down around them. If someone undeserving is on their team, they would rather lose than see that person win, like crabs in a bucket.
I have even seen people admit to doing this. That's why you can't appeal to reason by explaining that their behavior is contributing to the loss. Once someone begins to rage, they have already decided that justice is more important than victory.
Optimistically I believe humanity is generally good such that if you get a massive number of users the good overwhelms the bad. Contrast this with Overwatch who (IMO) has a shrinking userbase of increasingly hardcore/invested players, and the worst tends to shine through.
I wonder if this suggests that hardcore/invested gamers tend to be less kind than casual gamers or if this is anecdata.
> I wonder if this suggests that hardcore/invested gamers tend to be less kind than casual gamers
I can't prove this scientifically, but yes absolutely of course "hard core" gamers are more likely than casuals to be raging toxic asshats in any kind of competitive environment.
When I used to play games more the open source/free ones always had pretty decent communities and behavior, though it might have been an instance of finding servers that managed things appropriately and then ignoring the rest.
I have even seen people admit to doing this. That's why you can't appeal to reason by explaining that their behavior is contributing to the loss. Once someone begins to rage, they have already decided that justice is more important than victory.