In case that was directed at me: charging for the game limits the number of people who will play it, and the biggest “payout” for me was seeing people play my game and talk about it (and show me tricks I didn’t know existed). Coupled with the fact that I would have realistically grossed less than $4k (for hundreds of hours of work), trying to earn money would have probably made it less worth it.
Peak concurrent users in a day topped out around 10 on Steam (it's a niche game). Other stats: there's about 40 people on the Discord and there are 27 reviews on Steam. That's as a free game--I assume the numbers would have been lower (probably much lower) if it cost actual money.
As far as monetization on Steam, what are you getting at? DLC? I'll admit to not knowing (mostly as a player and, more recently, as a developer) of any other way to spend money on games besides buying them or DLC on Steam. Edit: I'm ignoring "free to play" since I don't like that model (as a player or developer).
Coming from mobile indie games, I was thinking ads (which I now realize steam doesn't allow) and mtxn. Despite whatever moral qualms people have with this type of monetization I can say there are many multiplayer games that would not be possible without them (or VC funding).
I agree that for most games, the difference in installs between free and not-free is many orders of magnitude.
