Yip. I think a large motivation for many games is not to make money but to make something that you personally want that isn't already out there that, where the money is just a nice perk.

"UnReal World", for the most extreme example I know of, was released and has been in development for more than 3 decades. It's still receiving regular updates, with the dev kind of mixing game and life. It's a game about surviving in the Finnish wilds, by a dev who lives out in the middle of the Finnish wilds.

And 10's were the saas era