It's not. It's a decent income: for a single worker.
Caribdis pays for his animator, and outsourcing others things, on top of his electric use (I use HS2 Studio and it is constantly 100% load on my 3070, it's really inefficient when idle). His pre tax take home after costs is probably more like 15k, which is still under $200k per year and the sort of figure you need to raise a family on a single income in a developed nation.
You are forgetting that his wife would also have a job. He doesn't need to provide for the entire family.
And in no way 200k/year is 'decent' - it's
awesome. The average annual income of an American worker is
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, while in Spain is
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(almost a third of an American one).
According to Graphtreon, Cari makes an average of 29k/month (estimate). 20% VAT = 23.2k. 8-ish% Patreon (thanks
doovel ) =~ 21.3k. Let's say he pays 3k/month to Dread (the animator, and the 3k is pre-taxes) =~ 18.3k. Let's suppose he needs to pay for some other stuff (like the outsourcing), so rounding it to 15k (total 180k/year). According to
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, he'd have to pay income tax closer to 23% on that (it's a progressive tax, so in reality he'd pay less than this estimate) =~11.55k/month or 138.6k/year.
In three months, Cari has a net income GREATER than the
entire average annual salary in Spain! He makes a
net 138k/year! How is that just 'decent'?!?
It is not a figure you can pay employees a decent wage on. This was the key part of my statement and why I stated that only the scam lord DarkCookie and Dr Pink Cake have the monthly income to have a team.
Any AVN dev with 1k patrons can call it their job, rather than a hobby - but how many can boast that? I'm often looking at Patreon pages. It's only in the last year that Pale Carnations has crossed this number, despite being the highest rated title here for years. Outstanding titles like Leaving DNA have only 300.
My link shows how many can boast that. DPC and DC are just 2 among at least a dozen that can pay for a team.
The 3k Cari might pay Dread will become closer to 2k (after all labor laws and such). That would make him get the average Spain worker salary. Hmm, he probably pays him more than that - I'd say closer to 5k pre-taxes. That would make Cari get like 123k annually or 10.27k/month. Still a great number, but I'll concede that he would have problems hiring someone else.
The fact is, most are only able to treat it like a hobby. Caribdis being able to take home the same money as a middle-level google employee is a massive anomoly. DPC and DC bringing in 50-100k per month is an even greater anomoly.
The world outside the USA and some specific countries doesn't pay as much as them. As I've linked above, Spain doesn't pay that much for an average worker. Cari has a much easier life than the average Spain worker - since Spain certainly has cheaper prices than the USA (for comparable cities). A guy making 12k/month in Madrid or Barcelona lives a much better life than a buy making 12k/month in Los Angeles or Phoenix, respectively. Comparison below, using the NUMBEO website:
Successful AVN devs to the level of Cari and beyond are indeed rare, but 'anomaly' is a strange term for that. He has a good product, he knows how to promote it, he delivers great updates and is an approachable guy. The anomaly is the devs that keep milking people and deliver nothing but disappointing updates (if at all).
