I never would have paid a penny for this prior, but because of his generosity I'll donate to him depending on if I like the game or not.
He wins every which way because:
1. word of mouth works, saves money on advertising
2. small company so there's not much to split the bills
3. lots of people ITF would never so much as looked at this, I guarantee it had he not done this. It would have gotten middling sales (couple thousand) depending on crossover from the XBL community with steam accounts and how well his works there were received.
4. there's no lost sale from someone who was never interested, the only thing is potentially creating a new one.