As someone who unfortunately worked for a ringtone vendor for a shot period, the main thrust of the "industry" was mis-selling a hidden/deceptive "subscription" service to children, which was billed through automatic premium rate mobile phone charges. It was a con-job where phone companies and shady ringtone companies conspired tp rip off children who were too embarrassed to tell their parents they screwed up by unknowingly entering into the subscription (by texting something to some number), and couldn't work out how to cancel the subscription (because this was made insanely hard). And then the next month they would get charged again.
These people were scum.
also - they never paid the music publishers, as the purchaser/subscriber obtained the ringtone they purchased/subscribed for, but rarely "cashed in" the subscription "credits" for additional ringtones, and the music publishers were only paid for ringtones actually downloaded ... so it was also a con on the music industry.
(1) Executives with emotional attachment to certain leadership styles that are enabled by physical presence,
(2) Interest in the investor class for the commercial real estate market. The business impacted may not be invested in it, but the businesses’ shareholders in sufficient numbers probably are, and so are the influential constituents of the politicians they want favors from, in a time of increasingly naked political corruption and cronyism.
(3) Backdoor layoffs. RTO is unpopular with large swathes of the work force, and people will quit because of it. That’s good for a firm likely to be cutting positions anyway; there’s no need for severance, regardles of scale there’s no WARN Act notice requirement, and if you still have to cut more positions afterwards, it makes it less likely that those cuts will hit WARN Act thresholds. And while the people that quit may not be the ones it would be your first choice to cut, they are the ones that would be most likely to quit in the kind of less-employee-friendly and financially leaner (in real terms) times likely to exist for a while after cuts.