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Hello folks!
Patreon requires us to remove content that is in violation with their community guidelines and of course we will follow suit and remove said content.
There was a lot back and forth and apparently several misconceptions about the content we offer, so it took a while to sort things out and figure out the scope of the changes that had to be made.
The following is a rough summary.
Deathblight RPG - Operation Thunderfang:
Despite the non-consensual content in the game, we always believed our game content falls under "survivor stories" and thus, according to Patreon's community guidelines, it would be okay.
But apparently this is not the case and we are required to take the game down from Patreon.
As it is a free game, the latest build will be made available on the blog for free as usual.
There will be no further progress made on the game due to the lack of funding, as we stick to our promise of never selling this game and thus it makes no sense to put our own money into it when we can't sell it, it was a purely Patreon funded project after all.
We will however release the Catheline Job update sometime in the future on the blog for free, as all the graphics for this one had already been completed, and it would be a waste to not release it, even if it takes additional time, I (Wolfenstahl) will work on it during my free time.
We sincerely apologize for these additional delays, the last couple months have been truly wild and this is just another bad news for us in 2020 that keeps bogging us down, but we will push the long awaited update out eventually.
Past this there will be no further updates though.
Monthly speedpaints:
There will also be changes in regards to our speedpaints.
Since some of them are not 100% clearly consensual and due to the nature of a single artwork lacking context and thus being debateable, we will basically remove almost all NSFW speedpaints from Patreon as well, so we are surely on the safe side.
It is simply too subjective and unpredictable for us as what kind of NSFW artworks are okay and which ones are in violation, as for example BDSM or rough sex can be viewed as "non-consensual", and there is no truly safe way to be on the safe side but removing this content entirely.
Patreon did not ask us to remove all the NSFW content, but due to us being unable to clearly identify which ones are in violation or not, we decided it is safer to remove most of it to be on the safe side.
After all, we do not wish to get into trouble, and we do not wish to get Patreon into trouble either.
The future:
We will rework our Patreon page completely in the next couple days to reflect these changes.
Furthermore we will be offering the Deathblight webcomic plus a new SFW webcomic which will be both funded via this Patreon campaign.
Speedpaints will most likely become SFW or "ecchi" (nude/sexy) only.
But there will be no full on sex to avoid any sort of potential trouble.
We understand that people will be upset about this and we sincerely apologize for this, but please understand that we merely want to stay on the safe side and we believe this is the only way to guarantee it.
We are thinking about potentially handing out SFW versions of our future games as loyality bonus on Patreon as well.
This is however not a main reward and really something you shouldn't pledge to us for, as our games will also be sold on platforms like Steam, as usual, where you can pick them up at a cheaper price.
So please only support us if you wish to support us for other reasons, or if you like to support us because you love our characters and stories, or simply want to support us as people (by us I mean: Cres and Wolf).
Outside of Patreon we will still do NSFW games since we are traditionally a self funded hentai game developer.
(since 2012, years before Patreon existed)
You will be able to pick these games up on DLSite or other storefronts as usual.
A Subscribestar campaign will also be upcoming for folks who want to pledge to us for lewd speedpaints without restrictions.
So you can get your usual content over there.
This content will NOT be made available to supporters on Patreon due to us separating these things.
So you have to go over to Subscribestar to be eligible for it.
Here is the link to the campaign that is currently being set up, it's not done yet, but keep an eye on this one:
You must be registered to see the links
Finally let me say:
We understand that Patreon needs to enforce these changes in order to not get into trouble with payment providers, so we will of course follow through with the necessary steps.
We apologize to everyone who is disappointed by this turn of events, but unfortunately things are as they are.
Since these changes happen all of a sudden, we need a couple days to set everything in motion and also announce the new webcomic.
After all, every end is also the start of something new.
Keep an eye out for these changes and announcements, and we hope that most of you stay on board with us.
We are very thankful for your support all these years, but we can perfectly understand if some of you are leaving because of these drastic changes.
It is perfectly understandable if you don't want to support us any longer, and as always, please think of yourself first and foremost.
We can only hope that you check out our future content if you come across it, and perhaps there's something you enjoy among it.
At any rate, thank you very much.
We love all of you!
Sincerely,
Wolfenstahl & Crescentia
P.S:
We are currently waiting for permission to make the correspondence we had with Patreon available to you, and will upload it in full once we heard back from Patreon.
Since we believe that transparency and honesty are the most important things, we feel it is only right if you get insight into this, as well as understand that Patreon is not "the bad guy" here.
They simply have to do what they are required to do by payment processors in order to stay in business, even if the process itself is a bit clunky and could need a bit of refinement.
Please be understanding of this, thank you very much.