from what i have experienced, fan projects need good leadership (clear aims, no endless scope creeping and can avoid drama) plus a core group of major contributors to succeed
also when you inevitably lose someone important to the project (be it obligations or drama), you have replacements ready and dont have the whole project fall over because one person was too important
this team failed at that: leader quits and whole thing disbands
skyrim and fallout worlds being handmade is one thing people look for in their bethesda games and they went with random generation, destroying large part which makes their games unique and lets you ignore their shit main story writing with the often better side content scattered around
its like how they ruined their dialogue system in fallout 4 with the voiced player and limited mass effect dialog wheel when they had a working, superior system to that
quite insane that nobody has managed to beat tf2 gameplay yet
helps that it has fanmade map scene and many become official maps frequently, which most modern studios dont support these days. Id guess valorant and overwatch would heavily benefit from community map designers creating something fresh for those games
yeah not really interested to buy it outside of a sale when its obvious they will go overdrive on online revenue in 6