Assuming they can get 500k subscriber for a year at $13 monthly fee. Their top-line revenue is ~$78 Million/yr for XIV. That's revenue not profit BTW....and I am sure they have already made multi-million $ investment in this the last two years...

It's not a great business to be in... like F2P (sorry to bring this up, I hate that word too), but it does seems like a long term investment SE already made. Long term, I think it will pay off though.