To be fair to the guy, his perspective might be skewed by where he lives.
Minimum wage where I live is something like, uh, 350$. Let's say 400$ on a good exchange month if the prices fluctuate a lot. 1700$? Whew man. I know Managers in what are considered high paying jobs that don't earn that much. That's definitely enough to support a decent style of living. Maybe not a big family, but that's assuming one of the spouses doesn't have any job of their own.
In short, in East EU land, and plenty of other places, 1700$ is a lot of money, even if in other places it's barely above minimum wage.
I have no idea where the devs live, or how big their team is, or how much their expenses are. Those are all things to consider as well. 1700 is a lot for one person where I live. Not so much for 2 people, definitely not for three, and fuck no if it's more than that.
That said, even without knowing all that, 1700$ per month, for the quality this game shows, is likely not enough. The art alone likely costs an arm and a leg, especially with it being animated... Either way, unless the amount is something like 10k a month, you definitely can't say that someone is being handed out free money.