A sensible drop in pledges on Patreon - here's an explanation

[Bruni Multimedia]

Sorry for crossposting this, but I believe fellow developers will be interested as well.
Also, whoever like our games (not necessarily mine) and has been or is going to be a patron should know about this.

Even if you just download them for free here you can support the developer you like, please read this and share the love for your favourite game!

You must be registered to see the links

In the last two months I noticed a sensible drop in pledges for this game (and others, I'm going to cover that down below). At first I thought the interest for it was decreasing, but I soon realized that's not true since many people are showing love for the game and its features.

So I thought it was for something I did on my part, such as new features, too many bugs, bad communication with the community. Again, numbers show me quite the opposite so it wasn't about that.

Is this about the quality of the game? Hardly. Many people are praising the game and its features, reporting bugs and suggesting changes. There's some criticism of course, but that's going to (hopefully) be changed by hard work on my part. Even harder than usual.

The problem isn't caused by dropping pledges, they are just about the same of each month in proportion. I noticed a sudden lack of NEW pledgers, new people approaching the game and supporting it on Patreon. It isn't about refused/fraud ones, after a few weeks of bugs on Patreon's part the percentage of refused pledges has dropped to its normal level.

So I finally figured out what happened, what has changed in the meantime: Patreon flagged the game as "Adult content" only, making it impossible to find on Patreon Search Engine (which made up for 63% of new patrons, that's a very high number indeed!)

Thanks to

You must be registered to see the links

which shows the 50 most successful adult game developers I have been able to notice that 90% of them were affected as well, with drops in subscribers which was unusual for the analyzed time frame (here's an

You must be registered to see the links

, but it's just one of many).

Is there a solution? Aside from removing all adult content and mark the page available again for searches I'm afraid there isn't. At least there's one solution: spread the word!

Those of you who can and will should spread the word about the games they like (not talking about myself only of course, as developers we're all on the same boat here) on social media, forums or whatever.

While this is not an emergency (yet) I take it that in time it will affect many people if it hasn't already, and we should prepare accordingly.

Also, if you're a fellow developer, what about sharing our own games with a post here and there? Of course you should only talk about games you REALLY like and with a post every now and then, else our boards will be full of other game's news instead of ours )

That's just an idea, I'm open to suggestions.

In the meantime, thank you everyone for supporting the game. Developing a game, even an indie one, is no small feat. If you haven't already

You must be registered to see the links

and figure it out yourself

Be safe and healthy,

 

[EpicLust]

I also had a lot of declines this month, including people who had been successfully processed the month before. And as of today, they are still declined as if Patreon still hasn't been able to try and re-process their pledges even though they normally do...

 

[Bruni Multimedia]

It's not just an issue with declines (my declined pledges have returned to their "normal" percentage after they fixed the issue). The problem is the lack of new subscribers. Are you experiencing that either? There are new people however fewer, much fewer than before. So fewer that it can't be mere chance.

 

[Volta]

Perhaps they are steering clear of patreon due to the problems with payment, doesn't exactly build confidence with the pledgers, i doubt it's just that but perhaps a contributing factor.

 

[EpicLust]

It's not just an issue with declines (my declined pledges have returned to their "normal" percentage after they fixed the issue). The problem is the lack of new subscribers. Are you experiencing that either? There are new people however fewer, much fewer than before. So fewer that it can't be mere chance.

I can't really comment since my patreon page has only been up three months but my decline rates for those three months have been (in chronological order):
0%, 1%, and suddenly 7% this month.

 

[Bruni Multimedia]

Mine is always between 2 and 4%, mostly 3something...

It has been 25% once until they fixed it in early August this year.

 

[OhWee]

Just a thought on the 'promoting outside of Patreon's framework' thing.

There used to be a few adult gaming sites that do articles on adult games.

I'm specifically thinking of

You must be registered to see the links

, which has featured articles on such games as Babysitter and Dating My Daughter. That particular site you may only get one good shot at (once they've done an article on your game, well I'm not seeing many followups), but if you feel that your game is far enough along for such exposure, this could help generate some new traffic.

Unfortunately, doing my google search, I'm not seeing any particular 'smoking guns' r.e. adult game review sites these days, although others may have suggestions along these lines. There's a couple of others, but the ones I'm seeing haven't been updated recently, or are only updated sporadically. If others have suggestions r.e. adult game promotion/review sites, feel free to share!

Quite a few sites seen via google are really just 'gateway' sites to other porn sites, so those aren't really useful.

Be careful. One site that came up in my google search had a bunch of 'bait' popups, in an attempt to infect my computer. xxxpornmikelenaisus, yeah don't go there. Hence why other 'safe' suggestions by trusted members here might be helpful.

itch.io is promoting a number of games, but I'm not sure how that site exactly works (name your own price?). Others can comment on that. Plus that site seems to be one of Patreon's competitors, so maybe not the best place to promote your Patreon page...

There are also a number of forums you can join to help promote your game, although many/the majority of those feature download links on uploaded, etc. So by joining said forums, in one sense you are supporting piracy of your game, but in another sense, if you can coax some of the viewers of those forums to pledge you on Patreon (i.e. by having a link to your Patreon page in your post/sig), well this might increase your overall donor base. After all, piracy is going to happen anyways, whether you like it or not...

The idea behind joining the various forums is that you spend a day promoting your game on said forums after you do a release (with a post or two noting the latest update), to help those that like to pledge to games they like connect with you.

This forum (F95Zone) is probably one of the biggest, but there are few other forums with lots of traffic. Specifically thinking of ulmf.org and hongfire.com here. There are a number of others. Your posts can get buried very quickly on the largest forums, while on a smaller forum your post might stick around on the front page a bit longer, so that's something to ponder (watch the page views and replies to help judge which ones are more worth your time)...

I'm sure others have suggestions r.e. the best forums to be on, besides F95Zone of course!

The whole Steam opening up to adult games thing is intriguing (I personally still like GOG better, but that's another discussion), and could be a great way to get eyeballs on your game if you can figure out the terrain there.


Anyways, I'm just reinforcing one of the points made by the OP, that is that you can no longer rely on Patreon to give you the most exposure. The goal is to get the most (friendly) eyeballs on your Patreon page, to hopefully boost the number of pledges for your game.

Someone might be able to make a decent go of it if they created a website that showcased Adult Games available via Patreon (i.e. something along the lines of PatreonAdultGaming dot whatever), minus the download links (you are trying to encourage them to download via Patreon pages), with either a pledge system (i.e. get the other Patreon creators to support your efforts) or by some suitable advertising model. But I digress. If said site did articles and reviews as well (aka lewdgamer's format), that might be interesting to people that play these games.

As the OP was suggesting, if you are looking to make money off of your game, then you should be willing to invest some time each month to promote it. It doesn't have to be a lot of time, but a day or two set aside for promotion after you do a release is a good way to help increase eyeball traffic at your Patreon page. Plus, if you are waiting on a render to bake, that can be a great time to take a break and check a forum or two...

 

[Paranormal erection]

I guess my average SEO skills might come more useful if I decide to make a game. Also isn't there an alternative of patreon?

 

[Bruni Multimedia]

I guess my average SEO skills might come more useful if I decide to make a game. Also isn't there an alternative of patreon?

Nothing serious, except traditional stores where of course you won't have a monthly revenue but you base everything in sales.

 

[Hadley]

I fucking hate Patreon, especially after all the retarded Bans of certain Games. I really hope Patreon dies and peopl are able to just release their Games into Steam Early Access.

 

[Bruni Multimedia]

I fucking hate Patreon, especially after all the retarded Bans of certain Games. I really hope Patreon dies and peopl are able to just release their Games into Steam Early Access.

Thanks. This way you are also wishing us to shutdown everything and simply end our job, for those of us who live with that income.
I hope your hatred for Patreon won't cause any of us such end.

 

[Fasder]

Patreon flagged the game as "Adult content" only, making it impossible to find on Patreon Search Engine

You've never been able to find adult creators by searching on Patreon, at least not for as long as I've been on there since December 2017.

As to the actual cause there could be several:
- You may have hit a peak where most people who like adult games knows about your game and you're not generating new numbers.
- People are pissed off at Patreon (I know I've lost a few due to this fact).
- People can't pledge, both AmEx and pre-paid CC is no longer a valid method to pledge with.
- People might've realized they can save a few bucks on pirating instead of pledging, but I think the majority of people who play these games knows about the major pirate sites so this is pretty thin.

There are probably more reasons but that's all I got right now.
I think that if you work on your PR more you could probably find more audiences and gain more patrons. There are still a lot of people who don't know about any of these games.

 

[Bruni Multimedia]

@Fasder The difference is that before you could unflag the Adult content for a few days, just to gather more ppl and then flag it on again, now you can't anymore.

#1 of your explanations could be right if only some devs were involved, but according to Graphteon most of us are. I guess #2 is the case, but people aren't there for the rewards (most of them) but to support the creator. And that brings me back to my reply to Hadley up above.

 

[Fasder]

@Fasder The difference is that before you could unflag the Adult content for a few days, just to gather more ppl and then flag it on again, now you can't anymore.

Ah I see, I wasn't aware of that, my mistake.

but according to Graphteon most of us are.

Yes, it may be affecting me too, but I'm a rather small developer so I'm not quite sure.

I guess #2 is the case

Yes, maybe, I'd say both two and three are likely to impact it, just not sure how much.