"Expensive" is incurring a tremendous amount of bad PR for a game on launch day. "Expensive" is having the launch of one of your flagship games be forever used as the butt of a joke. "Expensive" is turning your own customer base against you by having people who took days off work or stayed up until well after midnight to play one of the most anticipated games of the last decade being thwarted in their attempts. "Expensive" is people deciding to put off their purchases, perhaps forever, because they see the problems people are having. "Expensive" is having your brand reputation dented to such a degree that it affects future sales of all of your games.

That's expensive.

Compared to that servers are cheap.