[someperson]

Your comment is completely wrong. There is a cottage industry of emulation developers funding their development through Patreon. There is a huge number of emulation enthusiasts who are adults with high levels of disposable income willing to fund the development of emulators they enjoy using. Some of the larger emulators get tens thousands of dollars per month on Patreon.

Checkout the following links:

https://www.patreon.com/yuzuteam

https://www.patreon.com/cemu

[tylerhou]

They are not completely wrong. Crowdfunding a product is not the same as purchasing that product because often people only decide to donate because the resulting product is free. (For example, I give $5 a month to Lichess, but I am unwilling to pay for a Chess.com subscription.)

[theli0nheart]

I can understand why one would want to donate if you find the product useful, but donating because it’s free doesn’t make any sense to me. Could you elaborate?

[5560675260]

There is an argument that free chess service benefits chess community (and society in general) in a way that a paid service doesn't.

[tylerhou]

Lichess is not for profit, so donating to Lichess means that my dollar goes "farther" for infrastructure & helps subsidize the website (which has many features) for other people who may not be able to pay. The main developer only pays themselves $56k a year, when they could easily be making $300k+ in the valley.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Si3PMUJGR9KrpE5lngSk...

Chess.com is for profit, so they have to maintain some profit margin and lock features behind paywalls to incentivize people to pay. The free experience is worse than Lichess.