I would like to preface this post by saying this is my first game, and it is nothing special. but i have worked full time on it now for over 6 months 10+ hours a day and i believe it is comparable to many of the games launched on steam in the $10/$15 range.

I really want to be able to keep making games but I do not want to start making products. i got a lot of positive feedback from random beta testers and what they love was the random jokes and zany visuals and dialog which i feel only exists because this was never meant to be a "product".

So i decided to launch in early access on steam for free, but with 2 "support the devs" DLC options (3$ and 15$) over the past 3 days i have had over 1200 people get my game, and good reviews and feedback, but only 11 people have supported us, and 5 of them where early beta testers I met on Reddit. 

This was kind of crushing to be fair, i really thought there would be more support for our vision of "making something of quality but staying free" but it seems not on steam. 

one of the people who found us threw steam recommended instead of giving up on the plan of staying free, giving it a shot on Itch.io.

But before i go threw all the work of ripping out the steam leaderboards and all the in game mechanics we linked to them, i wanted to hear a bit of candid feedback, do any of you think its possible to make say 1000$+ a month here on itch via donations on a free game, that could have launched on steam for say 10$ ?

For reference, here is the game play trailer I put together:
(MODs this is a unlisted video without any linked to my steam page, im just putting it here for a bit of reference to hopefully get clearer feedback on my question above.)

my dream is to find a way to make games, without needing to worry about them being products, only about if they are fun.

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.