Think about it guys.
You have to be really gullible to support any project on Patreon. It goes double for something like supporting Gumdrop, but really, as a way to fund the development of games, the model is totally untenable.
You can buy a finished commercial quality VN for $10-$20.
If somebody was paying $20 monthly for three years (and stop pledging now), it adds up to $360 for beta versions of a game that's not even complete, and
WON'T be complete with part X, since it's only the first act and there are two more to complete the story.
Seriously, no game is worth $360.
If you support a creator on Patreon, you don't do it for the game, you do it for the sake of a creator.
Here's a theory: Gumdrop is stalling Dual Family as long as possible while he's also making other games under a different name. He's now finishing them and has time to get back to DF. It's as good as any other theory so far and explains everything, lots of effort in the beginning, minimum effort later (even though we saw that he's perfectly able to make the game).
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He didn't have to do anything to regain patrons last year and he didn't have to release anything to regain them this year. It was some time ago, but I went back to his posting history last year, and he didn't start panic posting to regain trust.
My impression is that his patron count doesn't influence his decisions. In fact, I don't think his patrons mind supporting him. There was a post I made here back in December or January where I listed his recent posts and comments/likes count for them. It was extremely low, like a complete lack
Unless he's already doing that, it wouldn't work out well now. Three years ago, Dual Family fit a very precise empty niche which has since become crowded, but is still unique enough that people believe in the idea of Dual Family.
I don't think a niche like this exists now.
I don't know what sort of team he put together, but with his earnings, if he's comfortable having a team, he could have hired a developer, a CG artist and a copywriter and the game would write itself.
With a constant stream of updates, he would have probably keep gaining patrons and he could have been up there with the best of them (
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), making tens of thousands per month.
Because he released seven parts on a monthly schedule. If he had not a lot of money from patrons, he'd either keep up because he believed in the project, or he'd have abandoned it* a long time ago.
*) I don't mean a situation like we have now. I mean one where he literally stops posting anything about the game.
Because none of us here know if he's lying to scam people, or if he's lying because he's in way too deep and has no idea how to get out.
Godwin's Law!
By your logic, a kid saying (lying) that a dog ate his homework is a scammer that is no better than Hitler.
Watch out with calling him a milker. Some people here have a very narrow definition of milking in that you have to have something that you're withholding by stringing people along. If you don't have anything, you're a scammer, and not a milker. Flame wars started over the definitions of some words...
That makes a lot of sense. It didn't occur to me until you pointed it out. Yeah, he should stop taking money and resume payments only
when if the game is released.
There's just one thing that might excuse him.
I know it's a very unpopular opinion around here, but you have to realize that Gumdrop did release nine parts and an extra side game which are his intellectual property. Complaining about him here, on a pirated games forum, where almost nobody posting in this thread has ever supported him (but did download the game for free) isn't very sincere.
You can obtain the game legally by subscribing to his Patreon (or through Steam, or through his own site). I don't know how much flexibility you have on Patreon with regards to suspending pledges while allowing new ones to still subscribe.
It seems that a lot of people think Kyle made minimum effort in releasing these previous parts and only did it in order to scam people. I tried out RenPy to see how much effort is needed and it's colossal. There are a lot of other ways to scam people out of money instead of making an incest porn game.
Not that it excuses his lack of work (damn, if I was making 10 thousand bucks a month by making games, I'd have done anything to keep it going and keep on releasing stuff).
