Paradox DLCs also classically add a ton of content every single time. Sure Stellaris kind of sucks as a new player because there's $260 of content, but it's perfectly playable and even good with only the base version and then you pick whatever new content you like as you want more of it. Rimworld has the exact same strategy and I don't see people complain about that. They release a complete game without any obviously missing parts and then keep bolting on cool new extra parts for the next 10 years.

All that to say, yeah this is kind of out of character for Paradox. Which does have me concerned about this.