Its about how much money Intel can continue to collect on a product after sales.
Imagine this, you pay $1000 for your RTX 4080, a $200 discount, but if you want to use DLSS that will cost you $8 per month, if you want to use RT that will cost you $11 per month, if you want to use AV1 encoding that will cost you $5 per month, hell if you want to play DX12 games that will cost you $9 per month.
Its hardware as a service.
Linus is right, its gross, and don't think for a second that Nvidia wouldn't follow Intel down this path.