Title says it all

Because $1000 wouldn't buy anything useful.

Or maybe pilots could try to make their own for the company; see this taste of what i'm working on, among the thousand other things I want to work on, which is considerably less quality than what I want to get to with the final product ;)

Honestly, the devs don't have enough spending wiggle room for that sort of thing [yet; Incarnate said they're saving for an actual advertisement campaign? ???], and most of our pilots are word-of-mouth, forums, or just people who stumbled in by accident [like me!]

Alright, thank you for your input

Retention is more important than advertising. Launching on Steam is sure to bring thousands of players in, doesn't mean they'll stay though.