tl;dr: 1) It's the GTA: DEFINITIVE EDITION for free, but better.
2) the devs have supported the game consistently, and as a result SoD 2 has gotten consistently better. But in a larger sense, they've done this without more monetization. They've not balanced by only trusting extrapolated data. Rather, Undead Labs seem to listen primarily to their Devs and their fans. Undead Labs is earning a reputation as a studio that listens, and have earned customer goodwill seldom seen these challenging days.
3) imo, SoD 2 is becoming a testing ground for SoD 3 concepts, so while Undead Labs is still accessible, become a part of this game and it's (excellent) community.
At this time, Stuck has 6,965 views for State of Decay 2 spread across 383 videos. His channel published over 11 days worth of content for the game, roughly 17.78% of State of Decay 2 content that Stuck has uploaded to YouTube.