Yeah, the devs play the game aswell, which is why you get that connection, because we all love the game and want to see it become better, become the game we want it to be.
With a game like Fallout, I bet you anything when the devs get home from a crushing day of deadline crunch the last thing they wanna do is play Fallout, they are probably sick of it, they probably hate it.
With a volunteer-contributed open-source game, it can be much more of a labour of love, picking the best fruit from the tree of additions, instead of the sour droppings of someones wage-slave labour 