As Eetan says, WoW popularized the specific shape of goblins as short green humans with a tendency toward capitalism and tinkering. There's a few other examples of hot goblins before then, but Blizzard very much standardized a form.
Some of it's just that spending enough time with an avatar in these sort of games makes it hard to avoid empathizing with that avatar, in some way. But while that worked out for the Draenai (and Charr and Asura from GW2, and whatever's hot in Overwatch), it's not like the WoW gnomes or dwarves took off, and even Tauren/whatever-the-fox-people are pretty marginal.
In terms of how and why that hits, it's similar to most other light forms of monsterfuckery, despite how much of an asterisk as it seems like 'monster' needs here. People like a characteristic. They know, and often don't like, the actual form of people who heavily focus around that characteristic. Doesn't matter what it is, doesn't matter whether that characteristic actually attracts bad things or if it's just a side effect from pulling around the tail edges of a bell curve.
That's most obvious with kink, and why a lot of monsters like dryders or the entire ouvre of Interspecies Reviewers. Exhibitionists aren't just people who like being seen naked, bondage tops don't just like tying people up (and subs don't just like getting tied up), every kink has a stereotype and that stereotype's usually not wrong. But it also applies to hobbies, habits, modes of social interaction, yada yada. People around them will respond in kind.
A monster can be normal, whatever they do.
Why would male MMO players want a normal (... if busty) woman who happens to be a nerd, rather than a nerd that happens to be a woman?
((Heavier forms of monsterfuckery tend to get into specific sensations or physical actions that aren't possible or safe with humans. Goblins have a little bit of that with the size difference, but afaict it's usually not a theme.))
The shop owner's a little too overtly villainous -- you do get real-world management shooting themselves in the foot repeatedly, yet that's almost all this guy does -- but having the other gobs be tempted by capitalism not because of lingering evil but because it seems like a reasonable approach helps temper it, as does other goblins only being in the coop for the minimum. There's more that could be explored, and it's hard to tell where the gaps are left undone for future comic material, which because the author isn't aware of them (or wouldn't run into them, just as Americans don't have to care about VAT-likes), and which because the author doesn't have a good grip or counter on them.
Still, nice to see someone trying to steelman their own positions, especially given the tendency of Marxists to be pretty shallow about it. I'd rather read well-executed works, even and maybe especially where I disagree.
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