My day job is designing complex IT platforms.

And the cost goes massive down with size.

So. If your game sells badly, you will most likely spend more. Oney in hosting and distribution then you would make profit.

For example, assume your game has around 50gb. You sell 100 copies of it. You can easily calculate 1-2$ per download.

Add your own personal on top of it, someone has to run that stuff, and licensing and more for statistics tooling and more.

Platforms like valve allow indie devs and small studios to avoid all those costs upfront.

“Not that much” depends on the view