More and more games seem to suck on thier own, but can be great with mods. You have entire platforms like roblox where all the games are more or less mods. How long until the platform itself is community created and managed and the viability of games created by companies dissappears?
Dunno “rise”, but certainly isn’t unprecedented for mods or similar to get standalone releases. Black Mesa and UNLOVED both come to mind.
And if we stretch definition a little, to my knowledge, Super Bernie World, Luanti, and apparently now S&Box all allow being used as engines for making mods as standalone games.