A bit unrelated but does it jive with people's expectations that this game sold 50k copies (~$700k?) in early access and is considered only moderately successful by the poster?
$700k assumes only USA/USD sales, but its anywhere from 20% to 60% cheaper by region. Also the developer could be inflating the download count, different steam analytics sites put sales between 20-50k. This very easily pushes total sales down from $700k to as low as ~$100k.
Games like this are also a big risk. Years of work could easily hinge on if a few big streamers decide to play it on a whim, or if you are selected to be on the front page.
I'd be willing to accept that maybe half of the sales are non US at 50% sales price. That's still around $500k, which still sounds very high. I'm not seeing any reason for the developer to be lying here and the actual range of predictions on your link is (17-90), so I'm ignoring that. Still seems high, indifferent to whether it was risky.
I would assume he has to take into account that it took him about 2 years (based off his Reddit profile post) and there's Steam's 30% cut + publisher costs.
I'm indifferent to whether he's feeling wealthy after this. I'm surprised at the sales volume for what looks like a pretty generic game. Does this really look like a game that 50k people would buy to you? In early access? Are my priors so wrong on how what it takes to sell $100k of games?
To be honest, no. It does not look like a game 50k people would buy in early access to me. I would assume it has to be with some streamer playing his game [0].
Regarding your other question, I think that yes, you might have a high conception for what it takes to actually sell some games. Not to disparage on this other dev for example [1] because it sure looks like the games are well polished, but these games definitely look very unappealing to me and I'm pretty sure a lot of people as well. IIRC he talks about how people really have a fondness for specific topics in games and how one can leverage that.
Games like this are also a big risk. Years of work could easily hinge on if a few big streamers decide to play it on a whim, or if you are selected to be on the front page.
https://steamdb.info/app/2205850/