It's the economy of scale. When you're making $4k a month on popular crowd-sourced projects, an extra $200 for a commission is probably only enough to cover the taxes you'd have to pay for it. Especially when that commission is going to cut into the time you normally budget for your regular projects.Creators that have patreons the size of his intentionally dont take commissions because they have no reason to. Why bother with the hassle of doing what someone else wants when you can do whatever you want instead?
He quoted something ridiculous and basically said it would need to be more than his entire patreon following for the duration of the commission.
It's just not worth it. In fact, it might cost you money if you charge too low. It's not right or wrong to say that you'd have to charge an arm and a leg when doing a commission would otherwise be, in terms of your business, literally not worth your time.
I'd argue the opposite. When you're keenly aware of how much your livelihood depends on people enjoying your stuff, there's pressure that comes along with that. It's true that you're probably less concerned with individual revenue streams, and therefore pleasing any individual supporter, but one of the pitfalls that comes part and parcel with systems like Patreon or Subscribestar is that you have to do what is popular instead of what you might really want to do.the more money someone has the less he cares to make good content, people think they help by giving their money to their big creators but they just making it worse, people should just give their money to smaller creators that actually will start to take this more seriously when they see they can make it a job. Its weird how in 2022 most donations goes to millionaires streamers/creators , they have money to live 10 lifes and still they want more and when they do a charity donation they just do it for the clout and with their community money not theirs xD
I'm sure there are some creators who would like to do more stuff for niche games like Detroit: Become Human (Kara is bae) or Elden Ring or what have you, but the simple fact of the matter is that Claire Redfield, Tifa Lockhart, Princess Zelda, and others like that are just more popular and more marketable. If you're making content like that, you literally can't afford to work on niche passion projects. Not often and not consistently, anyway.
It's a shame, but that's just the way it is.