To me the issue is the inflation price increase that most recently happened. Typically when a digital good releases in a finished state, it tends to stay at a max price. 30 USD is what Factorio decided on. Then it’s up to 35. Sure its had updates since the full release but why should I have to pay more then the full release price because I waited?
Because when you buy it now for $35 right now, you get more for your money than what I got years ago for $25. Even ignoring the additional content and polishing, you’re also getting the benefit of all the testing and bug reporting by early adopters, as well as the bug fixing by the developers.
Typically sales are the reward for those who wait.
This is just the wrong mindset. Why would the developer, publisher, valve, or anyone else want to reward you for not buying their product?
(yes, I know software pricing is a clusterfuck. But the common theme is that the seller wants to extract as much value from every customer as possible, so ideally they would set the price individually for each customer based on the highest amount that customer is willing to pay. Sales after a while are a mechanism for this.)