The Past "We made this game, and if you like it and want to support further development, we have these small DLC bundles, some skins or what not... Nothing fancy, but we wanna work on new maps to keep the game alive. There's no obligation, the maps will be provided free of charge, we're just happy the playerbase is so enthused"

Now "We've made a new venue for buying skins, the marketing people call it a game? Look whatever, oh and while some of these skins look unremarkable, remember they're only available for a limited time and those will cost 30% more than normal, but if you don't buy it you'll regret it forever when we take it away, either forever or until the GOTY edition."

(Seriously: Ban FOMO)

Seriously it has gotten to the point where games are so content bare that people are talking about the DLC before the main game's out.

Mortal Kombat 1 made that mistake so hard it had to start giving skins away to try to goad me into playing it again. Great story, terrible gameplay... weirdly the opposite of Mortal Kombat 11... (Maybe it'll help if your big DLC expansion wasn't 2 characters that are literally just genderflipped recolors.... How weird is that Cyrax and Sektor are female now. I mean, normally that's fine whatever, but in the context that Liu Kang created this universe to be his ideal, did he just have a Rule 63 kink for Cyber Ninjas or something? Or did turning the Transhumanists into Transgenders seem like too hilarious a pun for him?)