i know this has been done before, but i figured i'd do some quick math on the credits / reward points just to see. i don't have all the exact values, like e8, just approximating. did they cut reward points? i thought it scaled more at the top, they must be scaling it at per season values not 5pack rates or something.
round 2 - 5.00.
s16 - 10.00
e8 - 15
f4 - 20
NC - 4K, 9K is 60 bucks/5pack, lets call it 27
champ - 6k, 2/3rds of 5 pack, lets call it 40
so the cost just up to 2nd round is 40 + 27 + 2*20 + 4*15 + 8*10+16*5 = 327
that's not counting the NT 1, PIT, non-making it credits. NT1 is 3bucks, PIT is 1.50, any misc. people get like .75 or something for not making it, as an incentive, or something stupid? i never understood why that even existed. anyway, now plenty of those NT1 and PIT spots are sims, so its hard to count, but lets just assume in worlds with ~80 people, that most are making the post season, and getting at least 2 bucks off per season or something. thats another hundred or so (80 minus the 32 in the 2nd round), so we are up to ~427.
if we assume most folks buy 5 packs, thats 12/season. 80 coaches is then 960. 427 is a pretty large share of that, it only leaves 533 dollars! in 1/day worlds, thats like 260 bucks a month! even if they aren't paying seble for development, you have to pay for the server it runs on, the bandwidth it uses, the support cost of answering tickets and helping with misc. issues of those people, the overhead from the billing side and HR, taxes... i can definitely buy that 260 being a loss. add in any meaningful development effort, it almost has to be. if the game doesn't turn around soon-ish, it really may not be worth them running it at all.