The concept of fighting games going free-to-play is something that's been floated about by a bunch within the community. The genre has historically always had a problem getting casuals to invest into the games. You can dumb down the mechanics and inputs as much as you want so they don't need to learn how to do Geese Howard pretzel motions, but it means nothing in the end if they still need to throw down 60+ didgeridoos to gain entry into a game they're not sure they'll even enjoy playing.

Sure, they could wait until the entire base game and it's season passes are chump change years later, but then the game is either dead and/or overrun by people who can TOD them off a jab. As someone who's experienced that many a time, it's not exactly uplifting.

Killer Instinct 2013 tried this ten years ago, but I remember many back on GameFAQs and all the old online stomping grounds were worried about the nonstop barrage of Jago mirror matches, and in general were just dizzied by the stench of the concept being used by League of Legends and the like. The game maintained an okay following for a while, but unfortunately never met the popularity it deserved after all the great support it got. Brawlhalla however, keeps on chugging despite my miserable disposition towards it. Multiversus in more recent times also did this, but the game looked like it played like hot ass and the entire thing felt like WB flexing all of it's popular IPs they bought with their big dick corpo-bucks, instead of investing in public transportation and curing cancer.

What's a game that could provide a bullet point in favor of the concept?

Well, the fact I'm writing all this on a page for a funny anime kusoge fighter with a bunch of VTubers I don't recognize is probably the most hilarious shit that's happened all year.