I make $35k/year and do just fine. He's complaining about $120k/year. I already gave him triple digits in support in the early days. I did not feel my further $15/month, was justified when I hear "I need more! this is barely sustainable!" from someone making 4 times me. I did my part, but I am not spending hundreds on a game. The game is already ~70% filler dialogue and based on his character, he will likely milk the game until his income drops to "unsustainable" (which is probably like 75k/year to him), then jump ship or disappear. We've seen porn game developers do this time and time again when their games get popular.
Most Americans, when their income expands, expand their lifestyle to match. Suddenly making $50k more than you were making before? Your life is very likely to get $50k more expensive. There's a reason why most lottery winners are broke 5 years later, and why a lot of athletes and entertainers who grew up poor wind up being destitute when their career ends even if they were millionaires in the interim.
The smart play when the income spikes up like that is to put most of it away in safe investments and let it grow, while you live a slightly better lifestyle than you did before. But the safe play is boring. You made it baby, buy more house than you can afford! Your *insert career choice* is going great, you'll be making enough to pay that mortgage in no time!
One injury or Patreon rugpull later, it doesn't look so good. Most people, regardless of their income, can't absorb an income loss of $10k/year.
Patreon was sitting close to $11k before Molly's Bad Day. He was making an undefined amount from the gamepass, and an amount I wasn't paying attention to through Subscribestar. His income was over $130k before everything went sideways. Now it's under $120k. I don't know what kind of lifestyle he actually lives, but if he's like most Americans, he's probably took on the kind of debt that someone making $130k could manage, but is now only making $120k.
And this is all happening:
1) During the most expensive time of the year (holiday season)
2) As he approaches two very expensive life events (Wedding and Honeymoon)
3) As the US economy is exceptionally chaotic ($120k today doesn't go nearly as far as it did a year ago)
4) As Crypto goes into freefall, so the trendy investment that was working very hard to lure in money from guys his age became a black hole that will never return that investment. So even if he DID invest, there's a very real possibility that it's gone.
I get it, it's hard to feel bad for someone making 3x what you make, but the current state of the US economy is causing people making as much as half a million to feel financial anxiety right now, and I'm sure you'd feel one hell of a pinch if suddenly you were having to adjust to a $25k income.