[2023] designated playtest times

So if I invest $250, how often can I expect to play? I have done this for a couple of other games and the question that always arose was "Why don't you just keep the game running? You don't need to work on the version the players can access." But the answer was always something about the cost of running multiple servers and the bandwidth needed. So in the end we got a few hours per week, which isn't good enough for the price.