hey Aaron,
Yes, the game takes time to develop, and we're not asking you to pay anything at all until we deem it done.
Why you choose to be the oracle of how people spend their money is beyond me.
use 7zip.
the error you get at the start of main menu is a debug message and can be safely ignored
you're not getting stuck on the tutorial after data processing, you're not reading the part where it tells you to just go down the tunnel (i know it says to listen to the signal but thas currently bugged)
https://votv.dev and then check archive link or click the archive from the itch page
Look into https://itch.io/docs/creators/payments to understand how itch.io fees work.