Not sure, but the game basically never updates now so if you pay once while you wont get any updates (or not most usually) for free odds are there will be either 0 new updates or they're extremely minor stuff as the developer works on VAM2 for the rest of eternity before
You can definitely find a lot of free content for it, however, such as on Kemono, torrent packs, and probably on here. The store and website also have free sections split from premium so you can filter.
Be warned, you need a pretty decent CPU to play it cause the optimization makes Operation Lovecraft and Helius look like legit god-tier optimization. Even a RTX 4090 will not save you if your CPU isn't good, especially in VR. Almost entirely single-threaded bottleneck, too, so you need good single-thread performance. Don't even get me started on load times as you get more custom assets because of the poorly designed file management system which is literally the worst, without an ounce of dispute, the video game industry has ever witnessed.
If you have sufficient specs and get it be warned it requires a PHd to use as someone else mentioned (okay, not really but it is clumsy). Expect to spend probably 1-2 hours truly tinkering with it to get a proper full grasp, but less than 10 mins to get started. There is a mod you can pay for or find elsewhere free called VamX that also makes it way more user friendly and is made by a third party modder, quite popular at this point, that does the developer's job for them implementing and improving the game in terms of ease of use / convenience, including making your own unique scenes without going through elaborate efforts.
As for the other question you asked me Nihil basically covered the gist of it.
