This whole forum is funny in that it is always the same select people with their heads up their asses.

First off, "early fall" is an ambiguous term that certain people seem to have turned into "next month". Second, even if SE isn't 'investing' over half a million dollars into stocks or some such, do you really believe that one of the largest software providers in the world can't make use of that money in house? It's already on the books. It's not a matter of 'we pay 10 now, 15 later = 25', or '12.5 now 12.5 later = 25', it's a matter of 'they have 10 now'. We do not get that back. Does it go towards fees we pay to use their service? Yes. Do they get those fees earlier than they would have? Yes. Do they need to reimburse us for the money we pay them in advance for any reason whatsoever? Fuck. No. One way or the other they have this sum of money earlier, there is absolutely nothing stopping them from using it for anything they want.

Do you think they feed that money to the servers in order to keep them running? They have a bunch of guys in the basement with hardhats, shoveling stacks of cash into the ever hingry mouths of the FFXI server farms. No. That's ridiculous. The money they get early doesn't just disappear; one way or the other it is theirs. Having it sooner doesn't mean they need to sit on it until the next months pay schedule. We were given crysta for that. The money is theirs. Now.