The business argument can wear a meme face and still be serious.
“Give away the razor, sell the blades.” Games as a Service is big business, and while many software companies have embraced open source, conventional game studios still treat it like a threat. GameCult is taking that leap with flagship multiplayer experiences that are hard to duplicate because of server infrastructure and network effects and easier to monetize without walling off the whole experience.
That kind of flagship can fund stranger, smaller, or more narrative work around it. Single-player passion projects need a sustainable ecosystem behind them, not a toll booth on the front door. Recurring revenue is not glamorous, but it is one of the few honest ways to keep a studio from financing every ambitious idea with unpaid overtime, guilt, and increasingly desperate optimism.
The point is not to mimic the worst habits of live-service games. It is to use recurring revenue where it makes sense so the rest of the catalog gets to stay adventurous, legible, and less structurally dependent on squeezing contributors until they vanish.