Games seem to have a shorter lifespan[1] than PLs. Certainly from an economical perspective. Does the design have to be perfect? No -- just make a good enough game and then make a sequel that incorporates slightly other ideas (and that is always inferior to the original, apparently... or was that for movies).
[1] Surviror bias note: we might mostly tend to compare newfangled languages to well-established languages, ignoring all the ones that have fallen by the wayside from our perspective.
Games have shorter lifespans because they are consumable: you play them and throw them away. It gets slightly more comparable when there are games on which you can build a business/career (esports-types, MMOs etc). In fact, if you look broadly at the numbers from the last decades, popular games of that type last for roughly 1.5 gamer generations (~10-12 years), and popular programming languages last for roughly 1.5 software engineer careers (~25-30 years). There are of course very long runners in both categories.
Esports (at least RTS) games have to be constantly iterated on with regards to balance. That tweaking is probably simple enough when it is things like giving a unit 5 more HP, but the designers can not a priori know how the game will play out on the dedicated, professional level. Maybe what strategies and mechanics that are balanced on the level of "500 hours played" works great at that level, but falls on its face and is inverted at professional levels. Then you are either left with some part of the design that is so broken that no one uses it (underpowered), or force the game into a spectator-unfriendly monoculture of single-strategy, single-unit or whatever the players had to use to adapt.
Designers of competitive RTS games rely incredibly on player feedback. And they are eager to give it.
[1] Surviror bias note: we might mostly tend to compare newfangled languages to well-established languages, ignoring all the ones that have fallen by the wayside from our perspective.