so i'm just thinking ahead here i haven't made anything that is worth anyone's money but i might one day so i'm just wonder if i have to spend the 150 dollars in order to sell my games on steam or whatever. for some reason i can't find the answer to this, it probably has been answered about 1000 times anyway just wonder if it's possible to profit using the free version or not
Normally, when you get to a point where you are creating things that are worth money, spending $150 on the professional version is negligible. No matter what, it would end up being a good investment as it would give you additional features that would save you time and enable you to create a better end product.
Sure, you could publish things with the free version, but then you have things like the splash screen and all the limitations will just make it near infeasible/difficult to make a game with a reasonable amount of content.
If you are in a position where you plan on attempting to make money from a game, if you have any serious desire to, and the quality is good, you can almost guarantee that you will be aiming to make more than $150 because if you spend months of work on something only to make a tiny amount by selling, its really not worth it (you'd be better off just releasing a game for free at that point, having more people play and enjoy it, build a following and gaining an extra portfolio piece with a little more meat behind it.)
What i'm saying is that when the time comes that you are serious about selling games, $150 will really not be much of a barrier. Most reasonable distribution platforms have an upfront cost for creating a developer account anyway, so this is also something to bear in mind.
From a slightly indirect point of view, I do really want you to take the time to think about why game development appeals to you. I think its fair to assume you are relatively new to game dev and haven't really created any large projects yet. This is fine, and its fantastic that people are doing this, its a great thing to get into! Though being straight to the point, starting game dev with the sole intention of wanting to make buck as quickly and as early as possible is the wrong attitude. So many people come on here thinking they can easily make the next angry birds and all they care about is the money at the end of the tunnel. Enjoying the process, enjoying learning, designing and really getting deep into it should be the main focus. If you ever hope to get through a large project, you have to enjoy the process and enjoy what you are doing, otherwise it'll just crash and burn.
The other important thing is you should never undervalue the merits of just creating free games for fun. It's a shame that this community has started to drift away from that, though just creating things for fun and having the opportunity to try out a wide range of different styles and concepts is a really great way to evolve as a developer
So to sum everything up, if you have to even ask that question, you aren't in a position where you are ready to be thinking about selling games, sorry.