I honestly think it's pretty steep too. $2,900?! Like wow... what's up with that. I understand they have to eat as well, but why not if anything make everyone have to pay a low one time fee. Pay for the exe export in general. The fee that they're charging now just seems like they're getting all of the money that they could have made from everyone as a whole from only the successful devs just because they happened to be successful. I'm glad it's free for now (I wouldn't mind paying an extra smaller fee for the export itself) but I doubt i'll ever enjoy coming off of $2,900 for the exe export...
And from what I understand with GameMaker Studio, you pay for the exports individually but NO WHERE NEAR $2,900! I think it's like around $599 for everything and you don't have to pay that PER game. I'm not understanding why they chose to make it like this. Granted, most people probably won't make 100 grand in one year but why charge the ones that have/do that much?