Every paradox game (even the ones they just publish like Cities Skylines), every total war game after Rome 2, and almost every AAA open world loot box nonlinear title where they add significant features to keep people interested. It seems to be the dominant model now. The entire media industry is pivoting from 1 time purchases to neverending subscription models for everything, and that includes video games.
I also think it's short sighted to only consider a game "unfinished" if the developers say so. They can say literally anything. I would for example consider Warband (along with practically every other game I've modded) to be unfinished because a lot of its intended features are nonfunctional or disabled. There is literally unfinished code in the API.
Every company is in it for the money, and the PR counts as part of that. For example free range eggs cost more to make, but overall they can make more money because pretending chickens are sentient allows you to charge more money. Or for example you can buy some stupid starbucks coffee where 5% of the price goes to some charity, but really that percentage is there as a tax to sooth the guilt of overspending middle class coffeedrinkers, giving them an edge over other less """ethical""" coffee shops. In modern business everything is cynical, everything is systemic, there are no morals and the only real goal is to keep the company growing.
Even though Callum isn't explicitly lying, his job is to make Taleworlds more money than they pay him, and that comes indirectly by managing expectations and mitigating backlash. A company just releasing a game and going radio silence would also be in it for the money, they just wouldn't be very good at it. I almost want to applaud Callum for how effective his simple "don't expect much" statements were.
