I strongly disagree. When I decide wether I should invest my money into a game I always check the developer track record on the update and the time they take to update the game. For example I was a patreon of Summertime saga for 3 years, but lately the updates comes YEARLY when before they came monthly, yet the yearly updates come with almost less content than the monthly content from before. That's why I stopped supporting them. So yes taking the developer into account is very important when paying monthly for a service. ( I gave around 180$ to the people behind Summertime Saga over 3 years that's a lot of money for what I got out of it )Don't judge the game solely because of its developer. See, play and experience the game as it is and do not mind the developers for that moment.
- The game never was the problem.
- Jasonafex can be criticized.
- Stories about Jasonafex will probably shape your opinion.
Also remember that those of us who do not support Jasonafex and just pirate the latest game version have no right to either complain about the monthly costs, nor complain about choppy, unfinished features. You are stealing this game.
I also supported the developer between Curse Of Pleasure for 10$ a month for around 2 and a half years that's 300$ !!!! I stopped supporting him because he kept delaying his updates and as of today the last update was more than a year ago.
When you subscribe to someone on patreon you invest into the game being finished at some point, in exchange for that the dev releases weekly / monthly / yearly update so you can play the content that he added to the game so investing a lot of money into somebody that will never finish the game is a waste of money especially when let's be honest the content you get for ~ 5 to 10$ a month is seriously not worth the price BUT like I said it's to support indie devs that are passionate about their work.
Now for Piracy = Stealing not really. I never planned on supporting and paying for this so if I couldn't play too bad and I would move on. On the other hand if I really wanted to play this game and thought about paying for it but since I can get it for free I won't pay for it then yes the developer will not gain a sale but it is still not stealing. How many games on here made it BECAUSE of piracy ? Countless of them, this site is a literally free marketing for devs to get the word out of for their games, while we get to test them for free without getting ripped off, win win situation.
Edit : If I came into a store and saw a TV I wanted and decided to take it, it is stealing yes ? But if I went into a store and created a copy of that TV and left with that copy is it stealing ? Not really because the original TV is still there to be sold to someone so the company didn't lose any money.