Someone pointed out the difference in active user counts, too. 2012 Reddit had ~43 million active users. Lemmy has an active user count somewhere around 60-90 thousand.
Point is, if you’re a dev looking to recoup some target cost, you’d be looking at a way smaller and riskier user base than the one that Sync saw on Reddit.
Edit: I didn’t even notice the dev essentially says that here https://lemmy.world/comment/2017279
It’s priced in a way that allows me to work on this full time. If Lemmy suddenly had 10X users I could bring the pricing down.
My dad had the rare chance to name his position whatever he wanted, but the higher ups still rejected his choice of Grand Poobah.