My SweetGirl, we already have a new kind of addiction, NOT ME
, donation 
It's very easy to inflate your patron numbers by 10 cents per Patron so you can look like a fantastic dev.
Are you suggesting someone setup thousands of accounts that pay Patreon $0.10 per month to boost their patreon ranking?
I don't know if you look at his tier page. Most of them could be $1, but his $100 is sold out.
Even if they were all $1 patrons... (They are not) That would still be $5000+ Per month which is $60,000 per year. The last time money per patron was shown for Icstor it averaged at around $8 per patron. If those numbers remained constant then his current = $42,720 per month or $512,640 per year. For two years he has basically done jack shit. He released like 400 renders in 2 years. Lets say he made 500k per year over 2 years that is $1,000,000 for 400 renders. The guy made $2,500 per render over the last 2 years.
Don't forget patreon's cut and taxes (which vary by country). Before all that you might be relatively accurate but after it, not so much. Either way, some of these devs are making some seriously good money doing what they are (depending on their lifestyle choices and financial decisions).
Yea, the poor guy is only making $1250 per render now since they took half in taxes and patreon fees...
Of.. course?
This might come as a surprise but depending on country, that's pretty much the poverty line and in some cases below it. That'd basically come out to 15,000 per year. Even in most developed nations that's below the poverty line depending on how many people are in a household.
Sculpting? Lighting? Posing? Finding (models)? Writing? Thinking? Coding? Translating? Bugfinding? Bugfixing? Uploading?
