I think the alternative to Vb Wyrde’s PWYW story isn’t magically-granted wild success. Instead it’s that they started a Kickstarter and three people backed it before it failed. They probably spent most of the development time before that so the time was still wasted, but now it didn’t even get out to 200 people. Or worse, it’s twenty years ago, and they took out a second mortgage, had books made, went to GenCon and didn’t sell any.