It wasn’t a labor of love if he was charging for it, it just had a “small time dev” feel. A dev that just happens to have a fanclub encouraging every single decision he makes, no matter how dumb.

Let’s also not forget he tried to make it a subscription at release, only to quickly walk that back once people got pissed. He claims it was always the plan to have a one time charge, but seeing as how he wants as able to add it within 24 hours, there’s no real reason why it couldn’t have been there at release date except that he didn’t want it to be.