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I figured out the way I want to buy games. There should be platform that's marketed like a little greenhouse garden and your purchases would be handled like a growing stock. Let's say Shovel Knight was available on that platform, the way it should work is that you could buy the vanilla version in 2014 and it would be titled for instance "Shovel Knight 1500" for the 15 bucks you paid for it. What would happen is that just like Shovel Knight in fact did get a lot of free DLC for first time buyers, and was notably cheap early on but heftier by now, the platform should format free updates in a way so that your $15 purchase would grow by itself into a "Shovel Knight 2300" and beyond, and at that point the vanilla version plus all finished DLC would be 23 dollars to buy on the spot. It would handle DLC as a free early adopter bonus by default. Then I would be happy to even get double dipped with a full physical edition later on with my absolute favorite games, after my scant savings helped the company early on when it counted the most.

I wouldn't make it a mandatory to give free updates, but only to stick to the format. There would be companies that would release games with little to no "growth", but even then it would just be a neat and transparent way to market the value of those games. Customers could make their judgement if growth is the end-all worth or if they're happy with a good game that's samll but full experience right out of the gate. And of course it's exploitable with "over-valuing" a game by overpricing the free DLC, but I don't think trickery like that would get anybody very far or cause any real problems since you still get to buy the games you want to buy at the price they're available, not counting on always getting free enhancements is already just common sense.