You can't really compare STS and Milfy to other games though, ICSTOR has been around for a long long long time and just like with STS, they were basically among the first games, and recieved massive exposure from it as well. If they would have released their first game with zero fans today, it would've been a whole different story.I can't say you are wrong because everything you said can effect your bottom line but at the same time when you look at the most profitable games they are all pirated immediately yet they still make crazy money every month.
STS gets pirated the moment it is released yet that dude is still pulling in +60k a month. Same with Milfy City. I don't know what the secret sauce is but piracy doesn't seem to interfere with it. If anything, it might help it grow at least at the start and startup can't be underrated.
They also do have some really good marketing coming in from all that exposure, even bigger letsplays etc.
I mean you have house party, look what happened to that game when it was shown by some extremly big youtubers
The thing is, the bigger you get basically the faster you grow up to some point of course. If we theoretically would make a completely different game from timestaps we wouldn't be starting from scratch either, because many alreay know what we do.