Are we that bad?

[dimo84]

I know piracy is bad blabla but are do we really hurt the devs that much? I don't want to be ungrateful but like 70% of the games don't worth the time or the money. I know creating a game is hard when you have zero experience but making an incest/mc/school game isn't finding the "hot water". I really enjoy 2 games only and skip the rest. I really don't care that much about the fancy pixels but the story.
I am pretty sure a lot of devs that care about their games come here to read the comments and to improve something. Aren't we like a free QA? How much the piracy actually hurting the devs?

 

[Retro]

I would argue that if you make a quality product*, once it gets posted here, your audience goes up and then your income goes up as fans want to support you.



*

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[Blazblue]

 

[Dr PinkCake]

Honestly. Without this site, no one would be playing my game let alone pledging for it. It's naive to think that everyone who download the game from here would pay for it if it was the only option. That would never happen, so there is no point in fighting it with DRM and whatnot. This is a great site for reaching the target audience and getting feedback.
Game development is a very expensive hobby though, especially for indie devs just getting started. So encouraging devs you like, if you can afford it of course, is very appreciated. Even a mere dollar donation adds up in the long run.

 

[LS135]

I would argue that if you make a quality product*, once it gets posted here, your audience goes up and then your income goes up as fans want to support you.



*

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I agree with that, most games here have a patreon page and trough this site they get a lot of "Free marketing" and lots of people end up donating for the projects if they want to see then completed, and the people that dont donate and just enjoy the game are mostly the ones that do not have the financial "fortitude" to do so, so they wouldn't donate or buy these games any way.

 

[Blazblue]

 

[Sumodeine]

The current adult game business model is an interesting one: Here's an unfinished version my game, you can pay me what you feel like contributing to me every month and you trust that I'll continue making the game, and hopefully one day it will be finished. It's not perfect, but somehow it works. It's kind of like we're virtual street performers - You can watch what we're doing for free, but we'd appreciate a buck or two so we can keep doing it.

I obviously know that most people on F95 are not contributing to my patreon, but at the same time, I know that without F95, most of my patreons wouldn't know about my game. So it is a double edged sword, but overall I'm happy there's a community here. I just hope that some people find my game on here, play it for free, and WANT to throw a couple bucks my way to help in the development.

 

[Retro]

The current adult game business model is an interesting one: Here's an unfinished version my game, you can pay me what you feel like contributing to me every month and you trust that I'll continue making the game, and hopefully one day it will be finished. It's not perfect, but somehow it works. It's kind of like we're virtual street performers - You can watch what we're doing for free, but we'd appreciate a buck or two so we can keep doing it.

I obviously know that most people on F95 are not contributing to my patreon, but at the same time, I know that without F95, most of my patreons wouldn't know about my game. So it is a double edged sword, but overall I'm happy there's a community here. I just hope that some people find my game on here, play it for free, and WANT to throw a couple bucks my way to help in the development.

Obviously everyone is entitled to their own opinion but I feel this is the correct attitude for a developer to have. Then on the opposite end of the spectrum you have a certain douchebag who watermarks images in his game with the name of the Patron who downloaded it

 

[babes313]

Of course one will MAD if they know weeks or maybe YEARS of their hard work is distributed for free.....

BUT there's always 2 sides of coin, let's take another worse case of piracy....on music and movies (and comics/mangas whatever your term is), often got case of people buy the CD or blu-ray or the book if they REALLY like the stuffs, plus to support the author in the same time for making great stuff

Let's be frank even if its illegal, but sometimes cuz of piracy people tend to buy your stuff.....but if your stuff is bad (and have played it and know it first hand), why should I bother to pay it??

 

[baneini]

Freemium has always been a thing in gaming/software development, when someone thinks about getting into game development they know the environment they're entering. 99% of the players will pirate your work and this knowledge shapes the industry and their marketing strategies. If they assume otherwise they're sheltered.
Smart devs tend to communicate on pirate forums even though it could be seen as endorsement of piracy and you could imagine that leading to more people to pirate rather than pay. They assume everyone knows how, and is willing to pirate but some will pay anyways to reciprocate a favor. There's no good means to make people pirate less by making paying more convenient (steam/denuvo/online only) so they rely on goodwill which means they will avoid angering the crowd.

On a meta scale this is why no big game publisher can ever talk about piracy because the only things they're allowed to say are only going to annoy people. If companies or governments were to go around endorsing piracy it will lead to less people buying the software because theres individuals who are ignorant of the means, or scared of imaginary consequences or morally against piracy and you don't exactly want to change their minds if you're a creator.

The mainstream game industry shifted majorly towards online f2p games where the poors could play the game for cheap and whales buy skins for thousands of dollars, this is largely the same as a patreon porn games. Lots of cheap individuals who will Never ever pay, and about 2% of the playerbase paying everyone's share.

 

[LS135]

The current adult game business model is an interesting one: Here's an unfinished version my game, you can pay me what you feel like contributing to me every month and you trust that I'll continue making the game, and hopefully one day it will be finished. It's not perfect, but somehow it works. It's kind of like we're virtual street performers - You can watch what we're doing for free, but we'd appreciate a buck or two so we can keep doing it.

I obviously know that most people on F95 are not contributing to my patreon, but at the same time, I know that without F95, most of my patreons wouldn't know about my game. So it is a double edged sword, but overall I'm happy there's a community here. I just hope that some people find my game on here, play it for free, and WANT to throw a couple bucks my way to help in the development.

Basicaly its not different from presenting a project for potential investors, so you present your project and if people like it u start to get a few investors as time goes by and the project advances it raises the interest of more investors, of course that (at least for now) since there are far more projects than capital available for investments, it ends up in a scenario where most projects are kind of "underfunded" but out of the dozens of projects i have seen so far at least a couple has got enough funding to almost actually make a (small) studio, and i believe that with time more projects end up succeding. and one way we could improve the current sitution, is to maybe make this site more visible because its not very easy to find, and its a great plataform for marketing these projects.

 

[DownTheDrain]

The mainstream game industry shifted majorly towards online f2p games where the poors could play the game for cheap and whales buy skins for thousands of dollars, this is largely the same as a patreon porn games. Lots of cheap individuals who will Never ever pay, and about 2% of the playerbase paying everyone's share.

I wouldn't compare Patreon projects to the regular gaming industry, not even to the dreaded freemiums. F2Ps may have a limited lifespan but at least I'm getting a game out of it at some point, which isn't necessarily the case with Patreon.

 

[dimo84]

I see some actual developers answered, have you decided your game to have an actual end? It is pretty common these days to milk every idea that brings money till your expenses are smaller than your profits. Movies, big games (like WoW, HMnM, NFS) products (like I really need aspirin with banana taste), I understand it is easier to continue something that already has patterns to follow and you don't need a new idea, new chars etc.. I am really confused about this, you can spend like 120$ per year to play a game without actual ending. While AAA titles cost less and most of them will have more hours of gameplay. How about trying to promote it on steam or something like this. If the product is done, you aren't going to make much more money from it anyway.
I used to play Hearthstone a lot (adult game with cards could be fun ) I started at closed beta and give up after 3 years. It started to be like a job for me. Then started to play Gwent, I have a full collection but I spent 60$ just to support the guys. I tried once an RPG game with a lot of content but the gameplay was so messy that I couldn't get into it, how I am supposed to buy something like this?

 

[Ginji]

not sure steams rules would let some of the games here on its site

 

[Gomly1980]

Devs, here and in the AAA industry, always complain about piracy.

AAA devs don't face the problem H game devs do in that they can afford the advertising but you think how many games you see here you would never have seen otherwise.

I wouldn't know any of these exist. The only ones I knew about before coming here were Tlearo amd Moertze games and that's only because a friend told my wife about Dreaming with Elsa and I tried it out.

They can piss and moan about piracy all they want but without it they would have far less patrons unless they forked out a few thousand for advertising but H games can only get adverts in so many places and they aren't places I visit.

 

[Dr PinkCake]

I see some actual developers answered, have you decided your game to have an actual end? It is pretty common these days to milk every idea that brings money till your expenses are smaller than your profits. Movies, big games (like WoW, HMnM, NFS) products (like I really need aspirin with banana taste), I understand it is easier to continue something that already has patterns to follow and you don't need a new idea, new chars etc.. I am really confused about this, you can spend like 120$ per year to play a game without actual ending. While AAA titles cost less and most of them will have more hours of gameplay. How about trying to promote it on steam or something like this. If the product is done, you aren't going to make much more money from it anyway.
I used to play Hearthstone a lot (adult game with cards could be fun ) I started at closed beta and give up after 3 years. It started to be like a job for me. Then started to play Gwent, I have a full collection but I spent 60$ just to support the guys. I tried once an RPG game with a lot of content but the gameplay was so messy that I couldn't get into it, how I am supposed to buy something like this?

This is a question I absolutely love you for asking! It's one of the reasons why I personally wanted to make a game. To have published a finished product. There are too many games out there that have no end in mind and goes on for ever. Sure, if they still are enjoyable it works, but it can be as you say a way to milk the idea for money.
For my current project, I didn't release the first episode before I knew that I had the entire story figured out. I can't say how many episodes it will be for sure (somewhere between 8-12), but all the major events, twists and turns are DONE; as in written down. This keeps me motivated and wont let me deviate from the script. I know what goal to reach and I already have another project I want to begin developing immediately after in mind.

 

[groove888]

 

[freedom.call]

I'm bad.

 

[LS135]

I'm bad.

nah, u good bro

 

[dimo84]

For my current project, I didn't release the first episode before I knew that I had the entire story figured out.

I had an idea for a book during my last job (I hated it and had a lot of time to think about stuff like this) but after a while I get it - writing is hard, you need mood, you need something to fill the gaps. I decided to make it an actual game but I am not good in programming I have 0 art skills. I don't even have good PC so I am stuck in every possible way. But I did the same thing, writing every scenario to notepad++ and I got all major parts. Currently trying to save up some money till Nvidia release the next-gen GPUs and will invest around 1800 euro for new PC and will try to do the art because it seems the hardest part for me. It will be just a free demo, I am not sure how many people will enjoy the actual story because it will be a bit different from the usual incest/rape/Asian stuff. Also, my English isn't good at all but I want to have some jokes in the game, to make people laugh, not just pass all text till something give you a boner.