Now, knowing this, we can properly tackle why Game Grumps is a catastrophe.
Their ad revenue:
That rule of thumb I mentioned earlier? This was before the adpocalypse. Game Grumps was uploading two videos per day, all about ten minutes in length, averaging, what? 300,000 views per video? By all reasonable assumptions, they should have been raking anything between 600$-1200$ per day, every day of the year, which is about 219,000$-438,000$ annually. And yet they only made 158,000$? Before they started going downhill? I know that's not their fault and entirely on YouTube's garbage algorithms, but you really have to think: if they were doing that bad back then, how bad are they doing now? We're in a post-adpocalypse world; YouTube ad revenue has dropped by at least 60% since then. Not to mention, they've gone on record on the algorithm starting to fuck them over more than usual several times.
At generous most, they're making 24,000$ on ad revenue per month these days.
Their Income Streams:
Let's cover Game Grumps' revenue
First off, they have ad revenue. That's about 24,000$ per month.
Secondly, they have merch. God knows how much that makes them. I'd be pretty safe in saying they turn a profit on that racket, but how big of a profit is unknowable without peaking into their ledgers. Shirts and crap are easy to produce, cheap to manufacture, sell at heavily inflated prices and their merch in particular sells out quickly because people have shit taste, I guess. Personally, I get the impression that this is the only thing keeping their boat floating at the moment which would explain why they're so hard into it. At most, they make about 300,000$ off their merch racket per year. I could be wrong about that, though.
Thirdly, they have their touring company, Again, no idea how much this makes them, but I'd be willing to bet they're losing tons of money on it seeing as though you can count the number of clients they've on less than three hands, especially since most of them are "friends."
Fourth, they have their livestreams. I'm behind on my lore on that one. Last I heard they made shitheaps off of donations but then stopped doing them (or significantly cut back. Again, I'm behind on these things) so that's mostly dead in the water. Additionally, Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that netted them about 2000$-5000$ per week.
Fifth, they have their liveshows. Probably turn a profit on these too. Their shows pull in a couple of hundred to a couple thousand fans and tickets sell for 25$ each. Renting a venue costs anywhere between 200$-2000$ per hour. I hear they do VIP crap with alcohol, so that's probably a few extra thousand dollars in expenses. This probably makes them a lot of money. Rough ball park of about 50,000$-300,000$ per show.
Last, they have Starbomb and game development. lmao.
Their Employees:
Allow me to list of a couple of quick facts here- help paint you a picture.
Game Grumps employed 16 direct employees in 2014. They had an income of approximately 158,000$ at the time. That means they had a budget of about 9875$ per person annually. Minimum wage in California is currently 13$ per hour. Working 24 hours per week at a Cali McDonald's yields 16,200$ annually. Game Grumps employed sixteen people and yet couldn't afford to pay them half of what you'd make flipping goddamned burgers part-time. And that's before taxes, insurance, legal documentation and corporate benefits. And that's before their overhead like rent, utilities, software and equipment.
According to a Reddit post I can't currently find, they're currently employing 66 people. Sixty-six. What's funny about it is that most of them are goblins he's got working on merch, but not a single person in that ledger was an accountant. Makes you think, doesn't it?
Based on everything we've previously established, I'd guess they currently have a revenue of, at most, 1.5 million dollars per year (Circumstances brought by COVID-19 obviously not withstanding.) Best case scenario, they've got a budget of 22,700$ per person. But, again, that's before you factor in taxes (Hundreds of thousands of dollars), legal documents (thousands of dollars), insurance (Thousands of dollars), hiring costs for new employees (Thousands of dollars per employee), pensions (jesus fucking christ), benefits (You know assisted suicide is legal in California?), rent (Thousands of dollars), utilities (You get the fucking point), software, equipment, producing and manufacturing costs for merch, the money hole that is their touring company, the moving costs seeing as though they can't seem to stick to one office for more than five minutes and whatever equity withdrawals Arin is doubtlessly doing on the regular.
I doubt that Arin is paying a good portion of his people considering how many times he and Dan brings up "interns" and I doubt most of these people work full-time anyway- but, ultimately, the point still stands: Arin is probably paying his people like shit and his company is slowly dying because he's a moron who can't do simple logistics.