I know I'm late to the conversation, but I just wanted to add another possible scenario. His patrons churn. The fans of DMD slowly fade away and a new fan base emerges for whom Melody is a much more palatable character. In which case, he's successfully reinvented his business and unlike many other companies, came out with his ass in tact.
I agree. What initially attracted to DMD may have been the incest twist. It did for me, judge me as you will. But what has kept a majority of people has not been the incest, imo, but a plethora of other elements, not least of which is D as an innocent to love girl who slowly opens up to you stage by stage.
Teacher’s Pets is one of my favorite games on Patreon. This is not because of the daughter character in that game. It is because of the Meghan character. Again, a “DMD Daughter” character in that you slowly gain here trust and in return you are rewarded with delightful moments where the Meghan opens up to your advancing relationship in stages.
I wish I still had a post I wrote for DMD about a year ago. (I since lost it after a iPad incident of destruction and having also underfunded my cloud storage...). That post cited articles that stated the excitement in a sexual relationship has less to do with the physical act, and more to do with the “vulnerability and surrender” that gets to and includes that act. For example, sexual intercourse to release is in fact pleasurable. However, emotional and psychological rush of having someone who is trusting you and surrendering to a mutual intercourse: getting undressed and into bed, spreading, being penetrated, losing control to the point of orgasm...those arguably have more emotional significance and add more to the pleasure of the moment than the genitalia friction.
What DMD did was provide a charming MC Female with so much shyness that you get these cycles of “resistance/negotiation/acceptance/surrender” over and over again. That’s what both captures most of the DMD patrons and annoys most of the DMD detractors. The patrons are feeling this long slow ride that keeps hitting these “pleasure” moments of tension and surrender - areas of pleasure that appear to be less of a aspect of pleasure for the detractors.
It may be that the “resistance/surrender” pattern is much more a Romance pattern than some persons wish to experience. Think of all the great Romance movies, and the “resistance/surrender” pattern is what 95% of them are about.
I can’t tell you what everyone loves about DMD to make them patrons. But if it is a romantic pattern of “resistance/surrender” repeated over the VN while gaining in energy and tempo, then I believe the majority of patrons will remain patrons of Melody.