I suspect most people that only use their Windows computer for general stuff like web browsing, e-mail, multi media, office etc., which is probably the majority by far, will actually fall for the subscription scam.
I subscribe to M365 because my kids’ schools all distribute their assignments as Word docs. And they apparently use the most obscure formatting features, so the only way to get them to render and print properly is to use full Office desktop. Not even the web apps show them properly, and LibreOffice / google docs import totally mangle them.