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Because games are cool and there is no shortage of good developers.

All games are throwaway projects. Write one, sell for a year, gone. There is no maintenance period.

Not true for MMOs and F2P games, these often run for many years some with biweekly or monthly content updates.

Some of the simple but popular mmorpg f2p are licenced engines that you can customise into your own game and just run an update now and then.

Content updates don't need programmers.

Except for DLC. A AAA title will need to ship at least 4 x DLCs over a 12 to 18 month period. And no doubt the DLC development will expose serious bugs along the way, so the DLC will have to contain patches as well.

The lifespan of AAA titles is longer now that most are purchased digitally.

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