They could do staged releases, where you pay $30 extra to get access to the game 2 months earlier or #50 to get beta access as much as a year early (with warnin

They could do staged releases, where you pay $30 extra to get access to the game 2 months earlier or #50 to get beta access as much as a year early (with warnings about stability). There's a decent chance that could make up the difference. Still IMO better than Ads either in the larger streaming or in-game... or micro-transactions, or a number of other things that make gameplay worse.