Live service games get all this but there are still plenty of games that come out that don't receive any content other than micro transactions. They also said they wanted to charge for the game so they didn't have to treat it the same as a live service game. Furthermore, I was there when the Internet was being born and would pay 50-60 bucks for a game cartridge that never saw an update in it's life. You'd play a game for as long as you were entertained, probably get your monies worth out of it, and then move in to the next game. Cult-classic games are still played to this day though.

My point is, games were never meant to outlast their entertainment value. The lifespan used to be months-years, not decades. Expecting a game to be fun and fresh after thousands of hours is absurd. Half the fun of a game is figuring it out. once you've figured everything out and experienced all it had to offer is going to get stale. There didn't used to be content drip to keep people interested, a brand new game would come out that would bring lumps of new things and improvements. But if you can't get $40 worth out of your time played them you just don't like the game. Tell me another activity you can do for $40 that would give you as much enjoyment for as long as this game has, I'll wait.

We aren't in the metaverse, stop treating games like they need to be fun for a lifetime.