Its possible that I'm mistaken about the commission.
But the point is that that 10,000 a month is not as much money as it seems, once you have to divide it with a group.
Okay.
Arioch own the game and run the project.
He gets all the money and then pays the freelancers.
Everyone else is just hired hands.
Their are 5-6 people who do writing.
one guy who do coding
And two guys who do painting (one do line work and another do line work and finished art).
Freelance writers are paid by the number of words they do and yes writers usually get meager income.
The only guy who gets a fair share is probably the main artist Sommi, who does all the finished art work.
I would guess it's around $200 each art work or so.
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+ you completely forget the income from steam
It has sold
26k copies on steam
with a pricing of 20$
and the lowest discount was 30%
So even if everyone bought the game with discount arioch still made
400k-350k usd on steam alone.
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So...
1) It is not the lack of money that is holding back progress, but Arioch's inability to organize the workload and plan it properly.
2) Judging by Arioch behavior, he doesn't really care about speeding it up.
3) But why would he, if he has a good, stable income.
It's just the way it is, why kill a cash cow?