[paulmd]

> None of them have significant money sinks with add on purchases. Most are modable, adding to their appeal and longevity.

over-monetization is actually one of the things that's ruining modding, because if you let players mod whatever they want there's no way to get them to pay 10 bucks for a vorpal sword +3 when they could just mod it in.

this is one of the major pushes away from story-driven offline single-player content at present, there's no safe way to monetize it. To monetize it safely you need always-online, DRM, and ideally it would be better if there was some minimal amount of "multiplayer" interaction (but not so much that you have to spend a bunch of money on servers).

the titles you've named are mostly old titles (Skyrim) before monetization really took off, or indie titles. To get an AAA developed these days it pretty much needs an online component.