Oh really? Tell me what service comparable to Xbox Live has been available for decades on consoles? In fact I recall during PS2 people were saying that nobody plays online games on consoles (because of course if Sony doesn't do that, then nobody uses it). Xbox Live was a paid service for a reason (there was even tiers as far as I remember like Silver or something) and it had no competitors. Only much later Sony - forget Nintendo who discovered Internet recently - brought PSN and for a long time it was a hot mess and still shows its messy colors from time to time (PSN ID change anecdotes and so on).
People complaining about paid multiplayer just don't remember how crappy was the online infrastructure before Xbox Live. Xbox Live essentially introduced friend lists, voice chat and matchmaking. Also database normalization but that's just a little joke
(Hello, PSN). I am not sure and maybe wrong, but Xbox Live as a service was superior to consumer facing PC solutions at that time. I think only with Steam similar features came to PC. Essentially it was a service, worth its price.
Whether it is worth to pay it right now on consoles is an entirely different kind of flying and a question people ask after almost 20 years. In fact a lot of people pay for Xbox Live simply due to inertia (I paid 10 years ago, I pay now). Ideally all Xbox Live people supposed to migrate to GPU, considering how many favorable deals MS made for that, but people did not (they are migrating but not fast enough to scrap a paywall). Xbox Live Gold is a service will eventually retire, but not until Game Pass reaches a critical mass - consumer services are just too profitable to scrap them now.