To be fair, there're any number of reasons someone might not like hte game: crashing, gameplay, pvp, etc. Having to spend $40 to find out requires some faith. On the other hand, there're single player games that're $50 and once you open the package you can't just bring it back. Not much different, really. Although single player games have demos.

Dawntide recently tanked because it doesn't have a funding source. I can't help but wonder if they had charged for the use of the game if that would have helped to pay for its development. I mean, it wasn't free to develop it to a alpha/beta stage. Probably thousands of hours of development were put into it. How is that free, any any interpretation?

Time is money. If people think Xyson earns its money, it'll survive.

Anytime we invest in a game it's a leap of faith. But sometimes we make bad leaps of faith.