You never know. Pay them enough and they might retire to an island somewhere instead.
The only sustainable solution is to make crime no longer pay. Nothing else will work.
Basically making crime no longer pay best
Appeasement has never worked.
The only factor that matters is the adversaries residing in a jurisdiction with a lack of enforcement.
You make it sound like a simplistic game with set rules. There will be myriads of other reasons to breach companies, and even strictly sticking to the money part, doing ransom/extortion can have secondary and tertiary effects worth enough to do it even if the ransom fails.
If you look at it as a market, the victim is only one actor among many.
Why wouldn't they do that and sell the data?