I wasn't commenting specifically on your post, just responding to the apparent surprise at a small 'update' and giving my opinion on why we are that point with this dev and lots of other devs. There wasn't anything 'untempered' in your post per se, so my apologies if I was not clear with what I was trying to say.
The subscription IS a recurring donation, unless you think you are purchasing a specific product when you sign up? You get perks depending on the level of your donation, but it's pretty obvious what the setup is regardless of whether they avoid using the term itself.
Where in all the stuff you screencapped do you see it saying anything about "subscribing" getting you anything tangible (i.e., that you are making an actual purchase and not a donation)??
Do you have to practice those mental gymnastics or does it come naturally?
That aside, you are the only one here giving your own personal definitions to words based on opinion.
Taken directly from Oxford Language dictionary:
sub·scrip·tion /səbˈskripSHən/ -
noun 1. the action of making or agreeing to make an advance payment in order to receive or participate in something.
Dance around it with your mental gymnastics all you want. Patreon, unless SPECIFICALLY STATED by the creator's page, is a (as quoted above) "business tool for content creators to run a subscription service and sell digital products."
Now that is NOT to say that a creator could not use one as a donation page, or "tip jar" as I have seen several creators call it. That is absolutely within the realm of possibilities. However, a donation ceases to be a donation when you explicitly state that there is a product or service to be received by your financial contribution/currency. A donation is a one-way thing. You are giving something to someone without any expectation of receiving anything in return. Once there is a clearly stated exchange between two or more parties, it becomes a transaction. "A transaction involves a monetary exchange for a good or service."
So lets say Creator X has a Patreon set up with $1, $3, and $5 tiers described as $1 lets you see my posts, $3 lets you see my posts and images, and $5 lets you see my posts, images, and video. I decide I want access to Creator X's posts and images, so I pay for the $3 tier. That is a transaction - my $3 monthly in exchange for access to his posts and images. A monetary exchange for a good/service. Not a donation.
The inherent problem here is that you are trying to say that you can make a donation (again I emphasize - the word "donation" is being used nowhere but in your head) and be given a reward based on how much you donate. There are only two ways that it could be still considered a donation. The first would be that the person sending that money is disregarding the rewards and is making the contribution without any intent to make use of any goods or services offered under the terms stated in the creator's
Tier descriptions. The final way would be if the Creator offered no rewards at all in their Tier description.
Now to be specific to the current creator in question, one could have made an argument that there is no timeline specified on Patreon. HOWEVER, the artist HAS made timeline and amount of content promises elsewhere, so that argument is no longer valid. Anyone who signed up for the creator's Patreon page based on promises made by the creator as to when updates would come and how much content each update would contain, has a completely valid complaint if the creator fails to deliver on those promises. Because the only real statements (not incorrectly assumed definitions) made have included the creator's Patreon stating that the subscriber would get access to updates and the statement made by the creator in the developer notes of this thread that states "Bi-weekly updates(3 new scenes every 2 weeks) and weekly game progression updates every Friday on Patreon and Subscribestar".
It literally does not get any more clear cut than that. That is not assumption, conjecture, theory, or misrepresentation of the definition of already clearly defined words in the English language.
That's all the financial lesson I can stand to provide to uneducated or willfully ignorant present. If you still feel like pretending it's something it isn't, all I can say is either seek therapy or ask Oxford to change their definitions of a multitude of English terms, including but not limited to the words "transaction" and "donation".
Sidenote: I fully recognize that this forum is NOT the medium for people to voices their complaints with any hope of compenstation or resolution. My personal resolution was simply to stop paying for a subscription once I realized I was not receiving the rewards promised in the Tier description, something I highly recommend to anyone unsatisfied with the rewards they are receiving from this or any other creator. The beauty of capitalism is to let your dollar speak for you. Don't continue to support a creator that you are not satisfied with.
That aside, the main issue I have here is with the people who have come in stating that the complaints being made are invalid because a Patreon subscription is a donation and not a transaction. That is total misrepresentation of the facts. I don't mind someone who doesn't understand. But I can't abide an outright liar, especially when they use those lies to belittle or dismiss the concerns of others.
Tag me all you want. Reply until you're blue in the face. I can't wait to see what mental gymnastics get thrown around next. But don't expect a reply. I've said my piece in its entirety. There is nothing else to add and I will not get pulled into a cycle of continually repeating myself.