Highly agree, if DF just came out of nowhere and launched their old versions before having enough cachet/community to get studios to help them get it polished, it would at best become a cult classic years later, but most likely just be completely ignored. Without all the slowly increasing cultural awareness and community building leading it to becoming de facto “the most complicated game that is also a simulation and art” it just looks like a really complicated, technologically anachronistic game for neckbeards. Which it still is, but it’s had time to build awareness that it’s also exceptionally interesting, and that that niche isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

Also they wouldn’t have been able to keep it a single-person programming project focused almost entirely on expanding the core games features and simulation aspects if they released earlier. Way more time would have been spent on productionization and getting it good-enough rather than done, and more hands would be involved, making it less of a passion/art project of an inventor, and just a regular old commercial endeavor.