Selling software is hard. No one is guaranteed to be successful at it. Obsidian decided to go the free-for-personal-use route presumably because they thought it was the best route for them. They didn't get nothing for that: they got early growth of the user base, beta testers, community built plugins and themes, voluntary user-to-user support, and free advertising.
I'm not sure what the alternative is here. Is it forbidding free software?
I'm not sure what the alternative is here. Is it forbidding free software?