What's the motive to make this process painful? Would people really say Oh screw it, I'll just stay with GoDAddy? Ive never transferred a domain before so I don't know what the process or delay is normally like
Yes, actually they would. Or more likely, they intend to, only have small time slices and take weeks or months longer to leave.
Aggregated across millions of subscribers, and this adds up to big $$$, some of which can pay a high-priced spokesmodel to defray a large amount of the downsides.