Makes me vomit in my mouth when I read this sort of self-sufficient "I payed myself $60 / hour". You know what? An amount can only be quoted if you're PAYING someone else, it's only then when it stings.
These sort of entitled-clueless individuals wouldn't pay $6 / hour for an UpWork contractor to make a game 10x better than their crap.
For accounting purposes he likely did actually pay himself the money, transferring it from the company to himself, and adding the perceived value of the game to tho company, which can write off the loss going forwards.
Where I live (EU), if I pay myself "for accounting purposes" $60 / hour, then I own the state $24 / hour in taxes. Did he actually pay =~ $20,000 in taxes? If so, respect, he did pay himself $60 / hour. But I bet a castle that he "payed himself" $60 / hour just like I pay myself a castle per hour when I do side work. (Which is also why I so nonchalantly can afford to bet one :P)
In all likelyhood all he paid himself was the price of his game ($2.99) times the number of units sold (about 100). So about $0.375 / hour. Given the horrendous competitivity and sheer statistics his efforts at making a profit were a powerball gamble. No way he didn't bet $42,000 on it.
The author expounds on an appraisal of hypothetical money, if one imagine's that he paid himself all labor costs to perform the work.
He spent several months working on a video game that didn't do well, and made zero dollars.
Did I lose $6,000 dollars on a hypothetical bitcoin I never paid for in August, when the value dropped last week?
No, I left the $10,000 dollars in my bank account, and I still have $10,000, and/or whatever real goods or services I purchased with said money.