Ben80
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Indeed, VT, having taken over the banner of TE, prioritized game balancing. The development and support of the VT project ceased for quite ordinary reasons: the project was not monetized, it consumed a large amount of life energy, and this life energy was redirected according to objective life priorities.
The same thing may happen to HotA in the future.
It is not entirely clear how much money can influence this. There have always been and will always be projects that are created solely on enthusiasm, for free. At the same time, both monetized and free projects still have a finite lifespan. Just like a person, a country, a civilization...
It's great when a project can be taken over and continued by new people. So, regarding Heroes, I think that a project based on a patcher, which initially prioritizes the timely elimination of all kinds of bugs, has a greater chance of having successors than any other.
It is obvious that a project that was already known for its quality and stability during its "lifetime" is more likely to be taken over than one that was abandoned by its creators because an unacceptable number of bugs had accumulated.