They already got two seasons worth of characters out the gate. Keeping FM the way it was would have basically given seasons 3, 4, and 5 to them free.

I’m not exaggerating. I earned 1.8 million FM, enough for 18 characters, before AE dropped by just doing the story modes and easy survival with all the characters. I only completed normal survival with two characters, and I’ve never completed hard or extreme survival at all. I did all of season 1’s trials, but I didn’t finish the season 2 trials for four characters. So I earned three seasons for free (in two seasons) while leaving a lot of shit on the table.

As it stands now, new players can easily do the easy single player shit and earn enough FM for four characters. Then they can level up those four to earn the other two.