I bought Factorio long long ago. I still play it occasionally. If the developers asked me for money, say for an updated version, I would send money without question. But they haven't asked. Good game. Bad at making money.
https://vginsights.com/game/427520
Edit: The gross revenue is in the top 0.01% of all Steam games.
Maybe the kind of people who are drawn to those different kinds of games from smaller studios are not the kinds of people who will go for bullshit like microtransactions and subscriptions and the developers of those games know that.
Prior to the release of Subnautica, Unknown Worlds spent years developing and promoting Natural Selection 2, an innovative RTS/FPS hybrid that was the sequel to their crowd hit mod for Half Life.
They anticipated yuge money from turning the game into a frantic but predictable eSports thing meant for mass consumption with flashy paid skins and the like.
It was a failure.
The fanbase rejected it and it ultimately killed the game. They learned from that experience and delivered a totally different game which was based on the traditional business model of making a good single player game, selling it as a complete product and then if it's successful making and selling a sequel. That game was called Subnautica and it's probably the only reason you ever heard of Unknown Worlds.
There's no way I'm subscribing to Factorio, and I doubt there was ever a path to success for a game like Factorio that involved subscriptions just like there was ever a path to success for an incredible game like NS2 through eSports.
> By March 2012, Minecraft had sold five million copies, amounting to US$80 million in revenue. In November, Mojang had 25 employees, and total revenues of $237.7 million in 2012. [In 2013], Mojang recorded revenues of $330 million, of which $129 million were profit.
> In 2014, Mojang and the Minecraft intellectual property were purchased by Microsoft for US$2.5 billion.
If Google is addicted to reduction in personnel through automation, Microsoft is addicted to disposability. Almost all the work done on Microsoft-developed titles like Halo Infinite is performed by temporary workers who are employed for a period of months and then terminated. Microsoft thinks creative success is a commodity to be bought and sold, and it isn't.
I always end up having more fun with indie games (with some very rare AAA exceptions)
... Except in the rare case that the returns you want are in the form of good games, rather than cash. Then invest all you want in companies that don't constantly make excuses about why they need to exploit their workers and customers.