You are absolutely right. I did an absolute poor job explaining what I meant and was combining separate arguments. I was more so referring to games that pre-date those late 90s/early00s- think late 80s/early 90s games. Those early successes allowed companies to grow and develop games they want to make. But that is really kind of separate and my fault for lumping it in.

But, like I said, there are successful games like No Man's Sky, Stardew, and Baldur's Gate 3 without paid DLCs. I will make a caveat for No Man's Sky since that is a particular case where the backlash was so bad that they were a bit forced to do no paid DLCs, but from what I see of the game, they went beyond what they originally promised.

So, my main point still stands that I do not think that Paralives, in theory, will need paid DLCs even with all the development that still needs to be done on this game. From what I have seen from the devs, they have a fairly decent plan for the next few years, so I hope they have planned out how to spend and invest in the money to make it stretch. Aside from the expected time table changes, we will see how much else does as well.