It’s a lot easier I think, to be one person working on two games that are both passion projects, than to be a large studio working to support a multi-faceted project where the work is distributed across several departments and teams. In that environment, there’s no single person who knows the full ins and outs of the game, so when that post-launch skeleton crew gets to squashing bugs and adding features, they’ve already lost most of the knowledge required to do more unless that post-launch support was intended from the start.

ConcernedApe is also a crazy exception, even for indies. Most games of that scale do depend on at least a few different people, but the guy is a savant for game dev. Stardew being a solo project is absurd.

Factorio is a brilliant game, but most Factorio players understand that it is not the joy that drives them. It is a creeping need to grow, to optimize and overcome. That game is stressful. I love it but it could never be in my top 5 lol