It’s very nice of you that you want people to enjoy the game for free!
Unfortunately, the proportion of people willing to try a game for free, and the ones that are willing to donate even 1$ is VERY different, just as you experienced. This is everywhere, not just on Steam.
However, I get where you are coming from, and here are some ideas on how you can approach what you are looking for:
- Put your game for sale, then make a Patreon page where you put updates of your work. State in your page, that once you get enough $ every month, then you will put your game for free. So until then you can make some money from sales, and potentially build enough income to live off of Patreon. When that happens simply distribute that game, or future games for free.
- Put a Kickstarter page, maybe for future games and not this once (since its already made). Put a normal goal as “The game will be made and published for money” and a higher goal as “The game will be made and distributed for free for everyone.
- Keep making new games, sell them for some value, but have sales over time. This might be trickier, but you can also have 100% sales, so people can get the project for free.
- You can keep the support options. Yes it’s not nice that a very small percentage of people use this. A better way to look at it is that most of your users would never have tried your game if it wasn’t free. There are many many children downloading random free games online with no intention to pay, ever.
These are just ideas, but keep in mind they all take time. I think most devs make multiple games, and over time they manage to get a big hit, which helps a lot. I’m not sure if you can earn a living with a single game, unless it’s an amazing piece of art.
I know this thread is a little old, but these are ideas that even if they don’t answer your question, they might help you in your decision.