In the comment you replied to they meant video game development companies by “developers” not the individual employees at those companies who do the actual work of developing games. Typically the actions of video game development companies are driven by the MBAs who have most of the big picture decision making power rather than the individual employees who develop the games.

Everyone in this thread is failing to understand that “developers” in this context can mean both “people who develop videogames” and “businesses that develop videogames.” As the people who develop videogames are not always the ones who make decisions like this at businesses that develop videogames those two different things that everyone is using the same word for often have opposing positions on the matter.

In my eyes it’s no different than a publisher selling a book that is in the public domain. You’re not paying them for their copyright, you’re paying them for everything else that goes into putting a physical copy of that text into your hands.