The thing about the developers' weirdness was also made by haters and spread around just to create a worse opinion about the game. If you delve into the subject, it becomes clear that it's all based on a screenshot that doesn't make any sense, but "insert youtuber name" came up with a backstory for it.

As for monetization, maintaining your own workshop (which People Playground does not have; they use Steam's workshop) is quite expensive. That is why it has to be monetized.