Yes, but not entirely. It is true that you need to pay nowadays to have access to your first "decent" team of axies and we can say that this is even necessary for the health of the video game. Little by little you climb the ladder and it becomes less necessary to keep investing money but it is quite pyramidal in our opinion. The longer you take to enter A.I. the worse. With its "Play to earn" model, 'Axie Infinity' rewards financially those who play the most, but requires a high barrier to entry: an initial payment of, currently, about $ 200-600 per creature.