I've got an 'out of the box' solution to their datamining problem. Ask the user base, us, to run a distributed computing app or screen saver, much the the SETI project. I bet with the distributed computing power of the customer base we could rip through all the terrabytes of data in no time. Heck, if they didn't want to write the darn app I bet there is someone in the customer base that could and would do it. If not, i know there has to be someone in the open source community that would jump on it just to do it and have as a reference.
I know I would leave my 7 machines on 24/7 running such and app. Things like this spread quickly and you can end up with people not even involved in the game running the app just to help out. Heck, they might even decide to take a look at our beloved little game