Many jobs don't deserve the money they rake in (look at Heard and Depp, two obviously fucked up people, suing each other for millions because they can no longer earn millions when they should really be happy that they got to have millions in the first place), and essential service work conversely never pays a decent amount based on how much we need those workers. Yeah, I get that.
But I don't see this debate being over whether he's getting paid too much, it's about the logistics of expanding his fulltime hobby (that happens to pay for his living, and then some) into a proper business with employees.
To me, it's not irrational that he decides not to, nor would it be irrational if he decided he wanted to. It would actually be a big decision, with a lot of variables;
Pros (none of these are a given, things don't always work out):
- Content should be able to come out more quickly.
- Quality could improve if he sourced coders, writers and/or artists more skilled than himself.
- He could get more subscribers and hence improve the project's income.
- He should have more time for himself and his family.
- He'd be contributing wages into the economy (whichever economy, there's no requirement that he'd have to get local help).
Cons (some of these are potential, not definite outcomes):
- It would no longer be a hobby. It's not really a hobby now, but other than longer hours, there's nothing different to how he's creating the game full time compared to after hours other than the time per day spent on it. Once he starts employing others, things change drastically.
- He'd be responsible for the employ of other people. He can't expect to retain them if he can't provide a steady amount of work. So he'd start having deadlines where he'd need to feed them what he wants on regular intervals (he'd no longer be able to just work on whatever components of the game he feels like at the time)
- He'd be spending his money on others' wages which could result in his take being less at the end.
- The game could come out sooner and unless he starts a new project, his Patreons wouldn't continue donating once the game is done and he'd have to let his staff go and his source of income would dry up sooner.
- He would not be able to say he did it by himself (people like to say he's an egomaniac, but we all have egos, and it's nice to be appreciated when you've achieved something momentous on your own)
- It's unlikely he'd get lucky and get the best employees right away, it's possible he may never get the best employees. They could be good at what they do but unreliable, they'd also have their own lives and complications that could throw a spanner in the works.
- Employees may take longer to achieve things because they wouldn't be working the insane hours that he works, plus it's unlikely they'd be doing the work full time as that's a risk to them (quit their jobs and work for DPC full time, then be out of work after 2 years...)
- There could be disputes regarding their work or how much they should be paid, everyone understands he's raking in a lot for this game, employees might think they are entitled to a lot more than he'd want to pay.
- Employees may prove to be a headache, not following instructions to the letter, but trying to impose their own artistic value into the game that may be contrary to DPC's vision.
- He'd have to employ a book keeper or accountant once he's paying wages since everything's required to be declared correctly (it's much easier when you're just declaring all money coming in as sole income). So that's a straight up overhead
- He could have major disputes, like an employee loses a few days work due to a corrupted harddrive, they still expect to be paid, but DPC gets nothing for it. It already happened to DPC, that he lost work, hence he backs the shit up like a mother fucker.
- Will he have to provide his employee with their equipment? That's further outlay right there.
- The risk of leaks would increase since others would have access to the creation (and we know DPC doesn't like leaks!)
- With all the overheads and distractions from actually just getting on with creating the game, DPC could start to lose his passion for the game.
So none of the above items are concrete, but it definitely illustrates that there are benefits and risks with taking the next step.
So yeah,
we want the game sooner, but why should DPC take this risk when he's already making a fortune and enjoying it?
