Compensation for the early Sub fee

[Antipika]

Not true. They could pull the plug at any time. Shareholders will not go unheard if CEOs and the like wish to keep their jobs. They probably won't because SE wants to recover from a very embarrassing launch and prove the fruits of their labor worth doing, but that doesn't mean it is impossible. It could still happen.

Off course if you take it this way, they could, just like Blizzard could close WoW tomorrow if they wanted to. That's not the point here, off course we all know that any company can shut down any product when they want. The fact that XIV is a part of the main FF series kinda forced SE to fight in order to try and improve the game. They aren't doing it just for the small XIV fanbase to be happy, but for their overall image, and for all non XIV players but fans of the FF franchise. SE just couldn't let a "numbered title" in the series just vanish like that. It would be a shame for SE and to the whole FF franchise. (we all heard Wada already)

If XIV was made by a smaller company, wasn't a "14th" but a #1, I hardly doubt it would still be living as of now. The company wouldn't care. When you start a brand new project that's not a part of the series, if your whole concept fail, you just give up and move on to something else.

if given a choice between free and paying for something, people will always go with the free option

Not true at all, for most of people maybe, but not everyone. We have seen that a lot with artists releasing their work (could it be music, or books/comics) for free and leaving the consumer the choice to give a little something (sometime a lot), or just get the stuff for free.

Surprisingly enough, lot of people are willing to pay if they enjoy the product they got. The same goes for donations when it comes to freeware, lot of users are will to help the authors.

Off course that's far from being the majority, we all agree on that