Yeah, it's evolved into an absurd and mercifully very unusual/difficult to imitate business model. But in my (early) experience on the project, the model of selling content to a nonexistent game was something Chris Roberts very much stumbled into by accident. When I started working with him I'm sure it never occurred to him that such a thing could even be lucrative. CR was extremely deadline-driven until the crowd funding and the fan forums got into it. Prior to that, it was specific goals, limits, milestones, and a pathway to launching ASAP. In a sense, the crowd preferred being strung along, or at least sending resources to things that would delay development in exchange for some holy grail down the road. The shift was profound when it happened. SC is a bad example for most things, because it really was started with the best of intentions but became such a shitshow that most people assume it was intended as a con from day one.

Oh, I believe that they didn't start with this in mind, absolutely. To some extent, the whole thing seems to be a victim of its own massive crowdfunding success.

Basically nothing they release now could ever live up to the hopes, so even without the profit motive, the incentives would lead to endless moving goalposts...