Its true that developers are getting good paychecks these days but hear me out.
#1 case:
Imagine being a newbie developer that just started learning React (its difficult to say Vue on Kitze's repo lol), and you want to at least connect with people that go on these conferences so you can be in touch with people that share similar interest. You have no job, or you are doing some open source project that brings you a small income that will only get you to pay your bills. How to actually afford 500โฌ ticket?
#2 case:
You are not living in well developed countries where your minimal salary is at least 4-5times higher that the conference ticket price. How can you purchase a ticket that is 500โฌ in a country that has average salary of 300โฌ? You would say yeah, but developers usually earn more than the average salary, which is true but still how to extract 70% of your salary for the ticket only? Where is the accommodation, airplane ticket, your actual stay there for 2-3days?
I agree that you have to pay the speakers, organizers, the venue and all of that stuff but still, people that are limited with funds should be also available to visit these conferences.
A real world example is that if i visit http://reactforbeginners.com by Wes Bos, i actually get a coupon that says "You are visiting from Serbia (which unfortunately belongs to those 'third world countries'), here is a 57% discount IF YOU NEED it. The key here is that its offered, and i know that (including myself) if the discount is not actually needed, and the buyer can afford the whole price he will not use the discount, because i think that is how our dev culture is, since we all know how is it to invest in something and not get paid (hint: Open Source).
This was something that was going through my head since Kitze suggested me to go to a conference and i started doing calculations how to accumulate those 500+โฌ for only a ticket!
Conference organizers, please think of a solution :)