We did fuck up yes. In our defence there was a graphic on the front of the storepage and a breakdown in the Early Access statement bit, but Steam made us remove them prior to launching the storepage as they considered it a "call to action". We pulled it and signposted on the Discord but yeah, massive oversight on our part. I'm willing to acknowledge that.
I would point to this as the main reason why piracy sites get more traffic than their official site or Patreon. There's no legitimate way of being up to date on the game without dropping at least $3 per month to receive development updates.
This isn't an argument, it's a factual statement of the first-page Google search results for "carnal instinct game" prior to our Google DMCA takedowns. This thread was the top result, another ~10 pirate sites were the next links. It's easy to say now after most have been bumped off the google results but it was a stranglehold at the time.
We've "won" nothing, whatever small amount we've made has been earned by a huge amount of hard work. Also, thanks for the accusation that we're not going to 'show up again' despite the fact that we're actively publishing new content constantly. Nobody is forced to pay anything for updates; all content goes to steam once stable (minus a handful of cosmetics).
We will have a demo version of the game available in future, but as I said we're a tiny team and our current focus is getting more content out for our existing user-base who bought the game on steam or supported via crowdfunding. Also lets not pretend that demo versions end piracy - other games on this site have demo versions.
At no point have we said this. Several of our supporters are from f95.
If you check the very early pages of this thread you'll see I was active here. I answered questions via DM and have some f95 users as friends on Discord. We're new to adult game development and we're only human. Like I already said in my above post, I acknowledge that we've been heavy-handed with takedowns, but we want to survive long enough for CI to actually get finished and we're trying to find a middle ground.
The game has been on Steam since March. During March there were two hotfixes released to Steam. At the start of May - so within 2 months from launch - we posted a huge development update post on Steam detailing the wall of content dropping in June. That's so far above the standard schedule for Early Access on Steam I struggle to see your comment as anything other than bad faith. What standard exactly are you holding us to? I mean we've got a major content patch coming out for the platform in June - that's sooner than massive titles like Valheim or SubVerse!
You do you. We'll still be here developing the game for as long as we are able.
There are 5 of you, show you? developers who make games themselves and somehow live until now? change your approach because you have not referred to the example of "good seller" even once, which means that you really don't know how to sell the product or you are very bad at it
Most of the team work full-time for studios. We've published indie stuff in the past, however we're leaving stable jobs to make this thing happen. I don't know what your point is here.
I'm trying to be constructive and I'm trying to avoid just having an argument. There's a lot of other stuff in your post that I also didn't go over, that doesn't mean I accept your characterisation of us. We're on a piracy forum, so it's not as though any response I can give here is going to win me friends.
You can't have your cake and eat it; piracy may have helped some games but the first thing this thread did was smear our game and try to get us into a fight with WildLife & Ubisoft because a handful of users from here fancied themselves amateur detectives and found us visually similar.
Believe it or not I didn't actually hop on to f95 to get into arguments with random forum users, I came here to try and see if there is a middle ground to be found. We're new at this side of things, if you like the game and want to see what it can become then at least cut us a little slack whilst we find out feet. I'm not asking you to pay, but just give us the chance to try and find a balance.
I wanted to comment on this. The game on Steam is marked as early access, isn't that what it's for? People don't buy early access expecting a polished, bug-free experience (save for a few idiots that don't understand the concept, but everyone else knows they are idiots). Getting the latest, experimental updates and trying them out, giving feedback and helping shape the game is what that's all about. Giving limited access and outdated content is only gonna get you limited and outdated feedback.
Appreciated!
I don't want to be a dick, but the number of hotfixes doesn't mean anything as you're fixing issues that the game shipped with (though, I'll be fair and commend you for increasing the map zoom as per player request).
Yeah but we're talking the difference between "we finished this 5 minutes before you're playing it" and "we've removed most of the bugs having had 2k players run around it for a while". I wanted a stable option available, because the Pateon build will, by definition, always be more unstable as the content is raw. This was plastered all over Steam but we were made to remove it - even once we deleted all references to Patreon and applied to have the page approved but they refused on the basis that having the storefront itself discuss versions would be a 'call to action' - something explicitly prohibited on the storefront.
I mean that's not even remotely how development works. What do you think is being fixed other than issues a game shipped with? Go check the Valheim updates for a game that's made millions; the overwhelming majority of what they're fixing is issues that shipped with the game. The number of hotfixes or updates indicates development and the resolution of issues, many of which don't come to light for us; for example our rigs are pretty good but there were some shit-hardware-specific bugs we've fixed that would never have come to light for us.
If we weren't running a Patreon to fund development, updates would be no more frequent on Steam; it would be much less stressful to release a content update every 3 months. We'd be doing testing with internal testers and that would be that. Why don't we do that? Because it requires a huge budget to make a game like this and it wouldn't be feasible; enter our supporters. They enable us to make the game and test it simultaneously.
Yeah, that whole shebang was a shitshow and a half. At least 2 users had the gall to say that they eye-balled the main menu animation and decided it was ripped straight off from Wildlife lmao. One even claimed the game took the map from AC:O and didn't even stop to consider how much of a stupid idea that would be. When I asked for proof, none of them would reply, so that was telling.
hello love you'r game and wish you the best for its development , just quick question if you don't mind will the june build for steam include all the content for the may patreon build like the 'chosen of anubis 'quest and the the tomb of the guardian mini boss or is it gonna only include the female human head from that month because i only saw content from march and april roadmap in the dev vlog
According to the dev update they posted on Steam, it's going to include all Patreon content they've released thus far, minus a few cosmetic items. So the quests they've added to the game, along with the new dungeons, are going to be in that update.
You're missing my point. I'm not trying to condemn you for daring to release an Early Access title on Steam that has bugs nor trying to lecture you about game development - I have no experience in the field. My point was/is that you shouldn't (for the lack of a better word) brag that you released two hotfixes during the month the game got published on Steam as from my point of view, that's a negative, not a positive.
You are indeed misunderstanding me, but it's mostly my fault for not being clear. When I talked about updates on Steam, I meant development logs and not content updates or playtesting - makes sense that those are only available to patrons who pay on a monthly basis for the privilege.
Currently we have no plans on final price point that are different to the existing price, that said it may be slightly more expensive - we're simply not set so it's safer to tell people the price may increase and there be no unpleasant surprises. There will be a discount during the various seasonal sales for anyone who would like to support the project but not at full price.
It will include at least the content we list on the Steam update as a bare minimum. The other content will be in if it's not got any totally game-breaking issues we can't fix in time. We anticipate May's content to all be in the June Steam update.
I take your point but fundamentally disagree; even AAA studios have bugs in games, for Indie studios it's virtually unavoidable. If you don't want bugs, only buy/pirate the game once it's out of the various Pre-Alpha/Alpha/Beta stages. We signpost the status in the main logo and various other places.
I agree with this and we're moving to adopt this recommendation, as I mentioned above about putting changelogs on the community wiki (among other places).
