I'm guessing there are a whole lot of people who didn't subscribe, and gladly sat around chatting in world chat while they waited for the timer to run down between games.
In order to get the money needed to keep the game up and running, Zup would have to either raise the prices he's charging subscribers to offset the money he's not raising from non-subscribers, or find some way to motivate more non-subscribers to subscribe. As a subscriber, the idea of raising my costs while other folks get the same features for free doesn't sound very cool.