The game itself aside, the idea of players paying money for each go at the game is nothing new. In fact, it is probably one of the oldest payment models for video games and it was the standard during the heyday of Arcades. If you're 30+ chances are good that you remember putting coins into an arcade cabinet to play a game at some point in your childhood.
The whole idea of either paying per match or essentially subscribing for a set period of unlimited free matches is actually kind of smart, especially if there's no other monetization (and in this case I remain skeptical of the upfront payment, even if it is small) going on. As a contrast, a lot of "F2P" games will sooner or later burn you out on the grind and many full price games ends up in $100 range with DLC/season pass for all content. In comparison, a month of intense The Culling playing in which you get a subscription will set you back half an AAA-game and someone who just wants to pull out a few games to try it can get enough matches in to make up their mind for $10 and can decide after that if they want to put in more money. At the end of the day, you are not really paying more then you'd do for a subscription MMO and very few people balk at WoW charging $15 USD a month.
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