I'm certainly not saying you are wrong, but looking at a product like Bingo Card Creator -- something that's really only worth keeping up if the work is minimal and the profit's fairly steady -- I doubt I'd go to the trouble.

And as someone who works for a public service institution, the "only registered accounts can contact support" is a nice sentiment, but rarely works in practice. What ends up happening is that people didn't read that particular piece of fine print and now their pissed that you won't help them and you'll never make that conversion to a paid account. Obviously Pat tried it your way and made the determination that it would be better for his product’s future to limit engagement.

You're working on the assumption that engagement and conversion of the maximum number of people is the sole goal. Perhaps there are other considerations that creator has.

It's nice to work from first principles, but once the product is on the ground, you really have to revisit your own goals for the product to make a determination what will work best.