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Coders, under the right management, could take Graal to a new level; definitely not denying that. But really, $50,000-$80,000 a year is probably what Unixmad makes off of Graal alone, considering there aren't any advertising deals or pop-up ads, outside of the one airline sponsership Graal got (which didn't result in paid workers either). But! Coders could easily be paid for if Unixmad wanted to get investors to pay for them. Still, Graal has been around for more than a decade and Graal's business model hasn't matured at all.
Also, I wouldn't underestimate the power of professional art. While Classic's recent work has actually been very professional-looking, Classic as a whole lacks good marketing. There is a lot more art that Classic needs than just stuff that volunteers can do.
The problem isn't as simple as just getting a team that can fix the game and save the day. It's getting investors and growing the business model of Graal itself, neither of which seem to be happening any time soon.
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I'm pretty sure they make a lot more than $50-80K a year. There's over 3000 players online at a time on Graal Classic alone. Combine all the servers and its between 5-10K.
In comparison, Tera's concurrent userbase on Steam ranges from 10-20K(which is likely inflated due to people keeping the launcher open when they aren't playing). Now, Steam doesn't account for all the players, but from my experiences in Tera it seems like the population doubled after the Steam launch(maybe even tripled, servers that were "dead" even have login queues now. I'd assume Steam accounts for over half of the playerbase currently.
There's also Tera in Korean and Japan which are much smaller, so in total we're looking at maybe 50-100K concurrent users at most.
Tera generated over $200 million in revenue in 2013, and this was BEFORE the Steam launch, or the expansion. it's probably much higher now because the population went up immensely. With 10x the population, it generated over 1000 times what you estimated Unixmad makes off of Graal.
Also look at other games like Rise of Immortals, that had a team of dedicated developers to support an online playerbase of 50-100 players at a time before it eventually shut down. You'd be surprised how much money f2p games generate.
Also, if Unixmad hired developers, the population would likely grow and generate more revenue as a result. If they added cool items actually worth buying that actually did things besides look pretty, maybe people would buy gralat packs.
Need more reliable evidence? Team Fortress 2 is a Steam exclusive. In 2013, it generated $139 Million in revenue. Team Fortress 2 currently has 60,000 Online, Graal has ~5000 online between all servers. Also keep in mind tons of people in TF2 are probably idling/botting on multiple accounts for drops.
So at 1/10th the size, Graal would theoretically generate ~$13 million in revenue annually. Obviously it'll vary(maybe people are more likely to spend money on TF2 than Graal), but populationwise Graal is bigger than you think.