They could have done nothing and been okay because Paradox apparently put their competitor Sims game on indefinite hold so we're still stuck with just EA's bullshit instead of having a choice of which life sim with an outrageous amount of paid for DLC we want to play.
Paradox seems to be having some problems at the moment. No idea what is going on.
I think it is just an issue that management is greenlit to many projects simultaneously and now there aren't enough resources to go around (shockingly), so they have to suspend some stuff so they can focus on other stuff.
Personally I don't really mind the DLCs in paradox games.
The DLCs fund the smaller free updates and they are optional. If you want to regularly get more content for the games you love it might be worth the 20 euro (or whatever) and you absolutely don't need to buy every single one just the ones with features and content you like.
Basically the options are: more new paid features and some new free features or no new features.
I don't mind DLC that's done right for games I love. I just know it's a common complaint for Paradox games to have a lot of DLC. That said, there are games that have produced a ton of free updates with very little DLC, like No Man's Sky, Terraria, Minecraft, etc. So, I don't know that it's always necessary to have a ton of DLC to support ongoing game development. It's all very subjective and varies a lot from game to game.