anniversary should

I don't think they were obligated to do anything at all. Especially not for free. I didn't buy Fallout 4 when it was on sale back in 2017 thinking to myself "Well, this game isn't worth it right now but I bet there's gonna be a real good 10 year anniversary update in 2025 that will make it worth it!". I expect games to be complete when I buy them, and that goes BOTH ways.

The most recent AAA game I bought was Elden Ring. I'm not expecting FromSoft to add content to it in February 2032 to celebrate it's 10 year anniversary. I expect a social media post, maaaaybe a bit of a sale since that one isn't super close to the big seasonal steam sales.

And yeah... The GOTY edition regularly goes on sale for $10. I consider Fallout 4 to be a decent, but not great, game. Solid 7/10. $10 for the GOTY is still a great deal. It is unwise to buy it at full price, but that's kind of just how Steam works nowadays. It's playing off the psychology of shopping, so it makes more sense to leave the base price high and discount it regularly than to just drop the price permanently.

You can totally buy the upgrade for the paid mods separately for $20. You can also just buy the GOTY edition and buy the specific mods from that storefront that you want individually. Or you can still just stick with free mods or play vanilla. They aren't getting rid of any of the options.

Like, they aren't making the game worse. They aren't pulling a 2K- adding a launcher to games that previously did not have one, breaking Linux and Steam Deck compatibility for games that previously had it, retroactively pushing out ToS updates to allow them to install spyware on your machine, etc. They aren't raising prices like Microsoft is doing with GamePass or like Factorio did a couple years ago. I'm not sure what is going on here that's worth getting upset over.