I'm a project manager for a AAA developer and we discuss progression/addiction game mechanics openly. At our studio, we have been lucky enough to be successful enough to not be forced to add loot boxes - though we are pressured to do so on every project because while our games are extremely profitable, the publisher considers not using them to be an opportunity cost (meaning that in their opinion they are losing hundreds of millions or even billions of potential sales). . . and they're correct.
In any case, while there may be some PR person who is trying to run damage control for EA or Dice or some other developer or publisher who recently stepped in it with gambling loot boxes (guessing here, I haven't been following all of their press), the game industry absolutely understands the design tenants of gambling and promoting progression addiction in those games.
It's amazing how much players will pay to see even insignificant numbers go up a tiny amount that doesn't actually change their play experience. For a really good example of this, look at the PvE portion of Fortnite (and possibly the Battle Royale? I haven't had time to play it). They've set it up so that the player must level up every hero and many of those heroes share skills while only having a different appearance and you can get higher rarity heroes who have higher potential growth, so completionists could spend tons of cash just on this portion of the game. However, you also level up every weapon and trap schematic and all of these also have various rarities. Then there are support characters - NPC defenders who you may use to help defend places while playing, and "Survivors" who are basically plug-ins for various stat-boosts. All of these also have rarity levels too!
They are also a great example of making the acquisition of loot festive and rewarding. You get most loot out of pinatas and you can buy pinatas or earn much smaller ones with less loot and much less chance at rare loot by playing the game. The pinatas say a funny line when you bust them open and the animation is beautiful and entertaining with fanfair over your winnings as well as a chance for each item to proc into a more rare form. It's textbook gambling design.
What interests me most about this though is that players seem willing to pay for these things despite the game having a relative difficulty (meaning there is an escalating challenge rating that goes up with their power-level), and that the increased power simply makes the game easier when it is actually more fun when the challenge is greater. I didn't invest past the packs I was given for free from my friend who sent me a copy (a developer there who used to work for us), but I used it to max out epic gear as far as I could at my character's current level and while it did make the game easy, it wasn't ridiculously over-powered either, so even if the goal is to do the RPG-thing where players have the meta-goal of making the content ridiculously easy as a reflection of character growth, they keep that carrot just out of reach.
In any case, we absolutely understand that loot boxes are gambling and developers who make these games study loot box games and other gambling games to learn how to enhance progression addiction. No one in the game industry legitimately believes otherwise.
It's like Republicans with the trickle-down tax plan. None of them really believe it will help the economy grow, but their spokes-people will say that until their dying breath. They managed to convince people to vote for them and now they plan to cash in, but that doesn't play well to the millions of people who voted for them hoping that they'd get high-paying industrial and manufacturing jobs back and that they can afford a new truck.