Part of this I agree with but "The Golf Club" has made it through 3 games with course designer support and yet that game is alive and still probably another version someday down the road. There are other ways to make money other than course packs but who said you can't do that even with a designer? "The Golf Club" was making money but not updating all the time and bringing out another yearly version so you'd have to buy that one again which is not a bad way to go. "The Golf Club" also was released to Playstation and Xbox every version to which this game never even tried to do so right there that will keep you afloat because many more users play consoles.
There are many other ways to keep you afloat while still offering a course designer, you could offer up course objects packs with better quality models, better quality trees and bushes, more tees, bridges and such. You can offer more quality golfer models to choose from, cloths and all kinds of things and I think they started it but never finished and just offered everything for free which wasn't smart. And again we see it here, they have course forge but yet are releasing a whole shit load of courses for the trackman users but I would be curious to know if any other sim user that does not have trackman get access to these new courses or if it is trackman users only?
Once you go early access most game companies never put out a finished version so you can't offer up a yearly new version. I know of a few but VERY FEW that have done finished updates.
Trackman doesn't want competing software (.gc2, skytrak, ect) in THEIR game which is why you will never see another version of this game, if there is an updated version it will be for trackman sim users only.
The Golf Club appears to be at least in part affiliated with 2K games. Links 2001/2003 golfers know all to well what happened when 2K games purchased the Links franchise from Microcroch. Needless to say if The Golf Club does not see meet sales goals 2k is bye bye. So I will wait and see how that goes. So selfishly my best hope still remains in JNPG/PG corner.