YandereDev isn't making a "commercial" game, he's making a niche game. The 'chans are what YandereDev would have imagined his game's target audience would be, although in reality it's more for edgy weeb teens in general. The 'chans have a decent history of making good niche games, the least obscure of which is
Katawa Shoujo. It's a pretty good example of it's genre, it's just that that genre is nakige (crying game, a type of visual novel centered around depressing shit) so it's super hard to commercialize outside of Japan and the devs, to their credit, didn't even try.
If I had to guess I would assume YandereDev thought he'd be able to interact with 4chan like the Katawa Shoujo people did and attain a similar level of legend and use that to springboard to a real dev job.
The difference between YandereDev and the Katawa Shoujo devs is that:
- They kept their aspirations reasonable. Making a visual novel in RenPi is much easier for hobbyist-level programmers then making an anime/Hitman/sandbox game in Unity
- They designed by committee, with volunteer artists having a say in the game too whereas YandereDev needs total control so he can take all the credit
- They shut the fuck up and worked and didn't add a fuckton of easter eggs to their shit instead
- They didn't, to the best of my knowledge, blow up at 4chan being 4chan and saying shit to try to get under their skin