Doesn't that also apply to, say, GitLab paying their team? The pricing for a highly-available service isn't as cheap as it could be but it doesn't seem terribly far off of S3's pricing.

I know that a small game studio must have a tight budget — and yours looks like a really interesting project (just subscribed) — but it seemed like an awfully strong objection to what I would have assumed would be a small fraction of your total expenses.