People throwing their money at devs will not make devs work harder. The more money you give to a dev the less they work and the more they will believe they can get away with. 2 years of no updates and a little bit of pressure from f95 was what it took to put out more content. The fear of losing money is what motivates the devs. Without the abandoned label he'd still be doing nothing and getting paid for it.
It works, but there is a law of diminishing returns in play. A developer going up from $0 to $1,000 is a major difference. The dev will see some success there. The dev is highly likely to work that much harder.
Going from $1,000 to $2,000 similar indeed. That is almost at a point where a person can quit their actual job and work on it full-time. It will definitely make a change there.
The thing is though... When it is like Dev is making $40,000 per month... Then that bumps up to $50,000 it is not going to be a significant change, and probably no change. That is not buying a new GPU or hiring new staff anymore. Everything that could have been helped by money has been helped by money.
The less money a game makes the more throwing money at it can make a difference.
$1,000 a month could make or break a lot of small games. It'll give the developer a reason to invest time and energy in it.
$10,000 a month is nothing to a huge top 10 game. It is just that much more money in the bank.
Money only makes a difference when you don't have it. If you or I win a 50 million dollar lottery today... Our lives would have some major changes in it. New house, new car, pay off any debt, help out some family, whatever is clever maybe some vacation time and buy some other cool shit never really worry about money anymore even though we probably should save a big chunk of that or invest it wisely.
If the same thing happened to Jeff Bezos... He would probably feel the same as you or I do if we put on an old coat and found $20 in the pocket.
