Most people of that age have no income too.
I reckon this is something the staff would like to change. You see indie communities, such as TIGSource and GMC (Game Maker Community) who have a much more mature/older community. Their users are willing and able to fork out some cash to either support the game developers or, in GMCs case, GMC developers.
However, shoving them under the rug just because rips are primarily made by non-members is a terrible way to go about fixing the issue. Hide the rips themselves, not BYONDs majority of users which probably have no way of giving to the project. I'm sure they would if they could.
It's obvious that the BYOND staff needs money. They could have easily asked for you to pay to use their program, but they opted to make the development tools ALL FREE. In return, they ask for users to buy a membership if they'd like their game to be featured, if it meets the requirements. If you simply dislike that idea, it's easy enough to go advertise elsewhere. We are lucky enough to be provided a FREE hub.
One thing I do agree with you about is hiding BYOND from other people. This is mostly because I'm embarrassed by the sort of content seen on this site and would rather not be associated with it. Though, this update should help alleviate that.