as if it wasn't old school internet and piracy that brought him to relevancy anyway
without word of mouth and piracy back then, he would have been another nobody on newgrounds
Yeah, that still doesn't make them money though.
Wanna know how I know they weren't making money from the porn animation? On their Zone-Archive site they were still shilling that Hentai-key site that died of relevancy long before them, I wouldn't be surprised if the owner just handed the keys to the site to ZONE since they were the most popular thing there. But a subscription porn site in this day and age isn't what works.
Heck, Egoraptor is way more "mainstream friendly" than ZONE and he also quit doing animation because the cost = return was shit, now he makes slop Let's Plays and is more successful for it, as sad as that is.
Making animation is a sad job because of it, you do these amazing animation, take tons of time to make, and its unrewarding and all you get as thanks is "Exposure Bucks" like that should pay your bills.
Do I want ZONE to go back to making porn parodies of beloved cartoons? Make their mascot be in the raunchiest animation porn? HELL YEAH.
But I also get why they're doing what they do now, even if its something I don't care for and would just wish they'd be like their old self again.