Matt DeWinkeleer
patreon
2025 Half-Year Financial Review
🕑 Added 2025-07-12 17:42:07 +0000 UTCSorry for the delay! But here's the THG/VDR 2025 financial year in review so far.
This is to continue providing some more openness in how Vintage Digital Revival and our efforts to create all things Titanic is being run.
Income
From January to June, amazing people on Patreon gave a total of $58,197.55.
YouTube ad revenue was $13,094.05
Licensing provided $4,655.00. We have several possible licensing deals but the terms and final agreements are still being discussed.
Miscellaneous and other income (Meta has started giving us funds for some videos) was $232.90.
Total income for 2025 so far is $76,179.50.
Expenses
Crew pay to sixteen of the VDR team members was $69,252.35.
Contractor pay (musician and misc. modelers) was $5,998.79.
Subscriptions like website hosting, software licensing fees, were $2,857.67
Business expenses were $6,338.29 (these are heavier in the beginning of the year.)
Research costs totaled $2,345.81.
Fees associated with wire transfers to pay team members, refunds, totaled $304.91.
Postage that was mainly for sending Officers' Perks was $472.45.
Art and design costs were $720.14.
Patreon perks that were made by the THG team for Officers were $117.41.
Total expenses for Quarter 1-2, 2025 were $88,407.82.
It is obvious that our biggest expense is the team member pay. The consistently paid team members are a mix of modelers, researchers, and programmers, with some off and on members also being paid for work.
On average, each paid THG member gets between $400 to $750 with the exception being three core team members – Derek, Jack, and Kyle. Derek is our programming lead. A full-time salary for this position would require all the income VDR generates. Jack (who does not work on THG the game) creates animations for YouTube which help to bring in a significant revenue source to help pay others to work on the game. Kyle is the main modeler working on THG the game proper, and also checks other modeler's work, does research, and dozens of other tasks (and his beams are vital to making our Titanic work together and not be the mess that D401 is presently and will even be in P401.)
Two other core members – James and myself, Matt – do not get support from THG. James was employed by RMST, but he is no longer and his focus is Witness Titanic. I sell my Titanic deck plans and I am blessed that those are popular enough to keep me going.
Our goal with creating more content on YouTube, finding licensing opportunities, partnering with museums and documentaries, is to bring in income to pay more of the team to get more of the game done.
The team can understand why some folk would assume we are taking long on purpose to just 'feed off' Patreon contributions. But our goal with these posts is to eliminate rumors like those. Ironically, if THG or P401 was finally released on Steam they would generate much more income each month than Patreon ever could.
On the possible bright side we're currently working on releasing something on Steam for our community (that wouldn't even give us income) since, once again, things are taking too long.
Comments
Andrei Popescu
You talk about transparency, but you left out the most import part: What did all that money spent give to the digital ship? Did it get at least 1 new area since the last demo? Does the team even know what the rest of ship looks like? If you want transparency, answer those questions.
Harrison Worth
No clue why you don't just add P401 on Steam and update overtime.
Flore
"Ironically, if THG or P401 was finally released on Steam they would generate much more income each month than Patreon ever could." THEN WHY THE HELL are you NOT RELEASING P401 on Steam already and UPDATE it while you work on it? Why wait another 10 billion years until you finally finish everything on it and then release it??? It's so blatantly obvious you are working on these things a few hours a month
