I’m not sure what kind of disagreement went on behind the scenes, but just as someone who enjoyed the game, this seems fine to me. Five years of post-release content is better than what you usually get, especially considering that they were all good updates and none were hasty cash grabs. The base game by itself was endlessly replayable, then they kept adding variety.
The article mentions the studio is a co-op; I was not aware of that before. From the studio’s Wikipedia article:
Motion Twin is run as an anarcho-syndicalist workers cooperative with equal salary and decision-making power between its members.
WELL DAMN I already loved the game, now I love it all over again.
I’m not sure what kind of disagreement went on behind the scenes, but just as someone who enjoyed the game, this seems fine to me
Usually I’d agree but Motion Twin explicitly set up a dedicated studio, Evil Empire, to support Dead Cells for years to come while Motion Twin would move on to new games. It’s not like it was intended that Evil Empire would work for free. The paid DLCs were/are successful.