I think you have that wrong. 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

I think you have that wrong. 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.