With 19 million sales, I figure they made somewhere in the region of $200-300 million first week or two. Half a million in server bills in that time ain't chump change, but yeah, they're still in the black for sure.
I disagree, some would want to try it out before going through the trouble of setting up or renting a dedicated server.
They did have the option to host a dedicated server since the day it came out, for Steam users at least (Xbox Game Pass people are out of luck, but that goes back to the first point about "trying" Palworld first).