After having published Game of Shadows, it has become a topic for debate as to whether it should be acceptable to profit from material illegally disclosed to them. Both Fainaru-Wada and Williams claim that they have received little-to-no profit from their book, to this point. "We haven't seen anything from royalties yet. All I can say is, we're not getting rich, we're not retiring, we're not buying new houses, we're not buying mansions or anything like that. I'm not going to change my status (Laughs). And I would just say, even if it did, it's not relevant. I didn't do this for the money, Lance didn't do this for the money; we did this because we love reporting, because this is a great story, and because it's an important one, and that's why we did it," Fainaru-Wada said in the RealGM article. He also remarked, "Lance has a 'semi-joke' that, he did the math, and he makes, in a year, as a reporter for the Chronicle, what [Barry] Bonds makes in three innings." Williams went even further, saying that they had actually received an advance-payment so that they could afford to take time off work to write Game of Shadows.
