Game developers are kinda exploiting people

[Zippity]

People can hardly "forget" about their subscription when it's done within the same day. Just because Patreon doesn't have a "one-time donation" button doesn't mean you can't use it that way. I have roughly 50 new Patrons per month with maybe 5 real new ones and 5 real leaving ones. And on the 40 left, they're people paying, taking the games, and unpledging right away. They don't need a button to use Patreon as a shop...

Subscriptions to anything can be easily forgotten or missed for a short while if your no longer paying attention to the thing your subscribed to... It happens all the time, and it's been happening for decades... Patreon isn't some unique entity that doesn't have that occur... It's not like some big alarm bell goes off for all the world to hear as a warning to a subscriber that it's subscription payment day in the following months...

As to the One Time Donation thing, it still does not offer it as a real choice... It doesn't matter if all you have to do is sub, wait for the payment to post, and then un-sub... It's not like they post that somewhere in an obvious location, like when your actually at the Subscription and/or payment page... Just because some folks found a work around, still doesn't nix the fact that they are designed for only 1 payment type...

Before Patreon and it's ilk came along, most folks offered various payment styles... The pull of Patreon out the gate was that it only offered 1 style of payment... Even big Streamers bank on folks subing rather then one-time donations... And it is a fact of human nature to sometimes forget they are paying a few bucks a month or more in a subscription, especially if they are leading busy lives and just so happen not to notice right away that "oops, I probably should un-sub now as I haven't been to that site/page in a month+" It happens with MMORPG's, it happens with monthly magazine subscriptions, it happens with monthly book clubs, and the list goes on and on and on... You can't just make a blanket statement that it "hardly" happens...

I'm not trying to proclaim that Patreon is this evil entity, bad bad bad... It's just how they operate, and even if you don't personally think about it or hope it doesn't really occur, there are plenty of developers who use those sites and look forward to it, when it occurs... Money is money, and if it's all about the money for a developer over pretty much anything else, they are banking that little extra cash when it happens... Does it happen with everyone, heck no... But it does happen... It's undeniable...

The question that should always be asked is, what people would actually prefer: A new game or more content for the old one?

I know it's not that easy for some devs to stay motivated and the urge often arises to start something new, yet, patreons may see that differently.

Sorry, grammar police, i think you meant patrons not patreons... hehe...

As to the first remark you made in the quote above, it's a really good question... And I think it's different for different people... Yet I think the majority would like to see more content for the old one, especially if they like the current available content in a given project... The trouble is, this isn't a professional company ran market... It's primarily amateur developers and/or hobby developers, so development for a project, depending on it's scope and complexity, is gonna take a long time to develop... Even normal games take an eternity to develop... We just may not see the product till it's almost finished in those cases (although that seems to be changing with all these damnable early access games)...

The only time I really get irked by a developer, is when they get a year, or maybe slightly less, into a given project that is not all that bad, then they change gears... Either adding another development to their schedule which then pushes out the prior project even further (I tend to become extremely suspicious when they do this as it is definitely a milkers ploy), or they decide to start over after a very lengthy development period because they suddenly decide to go with a new engine or new visual software all while not using a lot of prior work done other then some basic story concepts if that (again, makes me suspicious when they do this), or they rush the current project to completion and do a horrible job with it just so they can start some different project ASAP (this tends to irk me because it feels like a huge giant let down usually), or when they just plain ole abandon the project even though it was doing alright because they got bored and wanted to do something new (this is usually when I say goodbye to a developer because what's to stop them from doing that again and again and again , which again screams milker if that is the case), and the list goes on...

Thank goodness, I think there are more honest developers then not... Or at least that is my fervent hope...

Zip

 

[woody554]

what's the end of the story of superman? what's the last scene of batman? it doesn't exist, and nobody would want it to be any other way. both stories have been going on for almost a century and there's no sign of them ending.

there's no specific need to have an ending. there's no specific reason why a sandbox or even a VN shouldn't go on forever.

and it has nothing to do with whether it's a sandbox or a VN or anything else. some people have the resolve to keep producing content, most don't. some people create their story because they want to see it come alive in the world, some have other and sometimes even fraudulent motives.

but pushing through the grind when it becomes hard is very difficult, it separates men from mice. I don't blame anyone from trying and failing. but I do have an enormous pile of contempt for those who lie about still working when clearly they stopped months ago, and now are simply scamming people for their money.

in a nutshell: it's not a crime to drop a project for whatever reason, no matter how small. but taking money AFTER stopping is fraud, and in many countries can even land you in jail. so lets not mix these two very different things and make excuses for the people who do the latter.

 

[Zippity]

what's the end of the story of superman? what's the last scene of batman? it doesn't exist, and nobody would want it to be any other way. both stories have been going on for almost a century and there's no sign of them ending.

there's no specific need to have an ending. there's no specific reason why a sandbox or even a VN shouldn't go on forever.

Well, even with those sorts of franchises they don't put out an particular story that just drones on and on for eternity... They finish up a series, a chapter, or a book, etc... Then start a new one, just using the same characters and settings... And not always necessarily setup as sequels to one another... I would never subscribe to one erotic VN/Game that had no ending in sight, and just went on developing for years and years and years without end... That sounds more like a milking ploy to me... It needs to end sometime... Then if they want, develop a sequel, or two, or three, etc... The franchise doesn't need to end...

Zip

 

[megaplayboy10k]

I'm going to mention a legal term: "Assumption of Risk". As a patron, you donate money on a monthly basis to a developer working on a game for a number of reasons:
1. To encourage development of the project
2. To express appreciation for what the developer has done so far
3. In the hopes that you will continue to enjoy what the developer is making and that they will finish it at some point, again to your satisfaction

You decide how much you are willing and able to invest per month--anywhere from $1 to $100+. Most patrons invest $20 or less per month. That's their assessment of how much value they place in their enjoyment and encouragement of the developer, and how much they are willing to "risk" on their patronage.
If you are donating $1 per month, your investment and your risk are both quite minimal--if you get unhappy with the game and tired of waiting after 5 years, you're "out", what, 60 bucks max?
If you are donating $5 per month, that's 60 per year and 300 over 5 years. It's a bigger risk, but you are helping the developer five times as much, and also generally getting more perks from your patronage.
At $20 per month, that's 240 per year and 1200 over 5 years. That seems like a substantial investment/risk, though the developer may have a lot of patrons and wouldn't necessarily miss your departure much. You are helping the dev to a significant degree, paying in far more than people would for finished AAA commercial games. You are effectively a junior league patron of the arts.
At $100+ per month, that's 1200+ per year and 6000+ over 5 years. You are maxed out on the perks provided for your patronage, but boy are you risking a lot of money! You're effectively a valued patron of the developer. If they don't treat a top dollar patron as a valued patron, they deserve to lose your support.

But again, most patrons of adult games chip in between 1 and 10 bucks a month, and not necessary for the entire duration of a game's development. So the amount of money lost on a "bad" game(whether unfinished, abandoned, delayed or poorly supported) shouldn't rise to more than an annoyance for most. Because you didn't risk that much.
Generally I think developers should listen closely to feedback from patrons, but especially those putting in 10 bucks a month or more. Because without their continued support, your funding will grind to a screeching halt.

I am a bit suspicious of devs who have "high dollar" patronage levels(like, say, above about 20-25 a month), because it is a high risk. If I were inclined to put in that kind of money, I probably wouldn't do it for anyone without a proven track record.

 

[polywog]

As to the One Time Donation thing

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[Ark Thompson]

Before Patreon and it's ilk came along, most folks offered various payment styles

As someone who was already making games before Patreon even became a thing, I'd be curious to hear which payment styles you're talking about. We're okay the topic is about adult games? I'd love to hear about those payment styles cause I'm all open about offering people more possibilities. (Also, some folks? I just told you that 80% of my monthly new patrons are people pledging/unpledging right away and you say it's just "some folks"?)

I'd also like to add that your whole point of "paying once" is just incompatible with a game funding anyway. It COULD work with someone doing it as hobby (and I'm not even sure it would work for long). But for people living from it? You'd get $2,000 one month and the next one you'd only get $500. "Ah, fuck, but I have 5 people to pay... So, here's your money, here's yours and yours... Ah... not only do I have $0 left to live this month but I also had to use my own money to make sure my collaborators all get paid." And then what? You eat stones for a whole months praying every evening that people are nice enough to make a single-time donation so you can eat next month?

Things don't work this way. You need a regular income and the only way to have a regular income is to ask people a monthly subscribtion. Stuff like Kickstarter when you ask a global sum for your development time almost never work as originally intended. If it worked THAT well, the "Kickstarter" for adult that disappeared around 2015 (don't remember its name) would still be here bravely competiting with Patreon (and it was a site older than Patreon, so it was more famous back then.) And yet, no. There's a single game that made it out back then: Legend of Queen Opala: Origins. And oh! Look where Gabe has been for the past 5 years? But she had asked for a global amount with only one-time payments! Why did she change that? Because it's logical. The reason she can keep doing what she does is because she is assured to have a secured amount of money every month, allowing her to plan ahead different things, which is something you just can't do when your income fluctuates so much you don't even know if you'll be able to eat next time...

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Nutaku sells finished games. Comparing the funding of a game in development to its selling once it's over is off-topic (it's even more ironical in a thread where the OP complains that some devs are never finishing their games)

And on a side-note, just a little thing for people who'd think Nutaku are white knights: They kicked me out back when they bought Kimochi for the same reasons Patreon is suspending multiple creators. You use Visa/Mastercards cards on Nutaku too, don't forget that :x

 

[polywog]

Nutaku sells finished games. Comparing the funding of a game in development to its selling once it's over is off-topic (it's even more ironical in a thread where the OP complains that some devs are never finishing their games)

And on a side-note, just a little thing for people who'd think Nutaku are white knights: They kicked me out back when they bought Kimochi for the same reasons Patreon is suspending multiple creators. You use Visa/Mastercards cards on Nutaku too, don't forget that :x

Nutaku owns Pornhub, and many many more adult sites, and subscription services, they have been trusted with people's credit card information for half a century. Unlike the shady startup "patreon" that was hacked, and had 14 GB of customer's personal info dumped on the web for everyone to see.

 

[Furabia]

OP, I think you bring up various good points and it generates discussion on a relevant topic which is nice.

I was going to add my 2 cents, but reading the thread most people already brought up some good counter points that I was going to make in one shape or another so I'll not.

Wait, I think I can at least add this little tidbit so you can think about it this way:

Yes there are many developers (not all) who exploit their patreons, yes there are many games stuck in limbo, yes there are many unfinished/abandoned games... but the truth is that without patreon and the "revolution" that it was for porn developers, no kidding about 80% of the entiriety of western porn games (wheter succesful/good or not) would not exist at all!

So in a sense you can think of those bad developers as a "necessary evil", or more specifically as a simple byproduct of the good thing that is having lots of actual good devs who made nice games that we enjoyed playing, with good updates and excellent smut content, which otherwise would have never existed in the first place.

So at the end of the day, it falls upon each individual supporter to judge if the game that they are supporting is worth their time and money, and if the developer is genuine even when they delay some updates.

 

[megaplayboy10k]

Basically, there had to be some way to pay developers and an incremental pay as you go approach tends to maximize the number of people who can make games. Assume that the games require between 500 and 50k man hours to make. It's not realistic to expect too many people to do that for free, or for them to invest that kind of time while waiting years to get paid for the final product. So the patreon model works reasonably well. There will be some who try to exploit the system to maximize income for minimal effort, but you should assume that most people are acting in good faith.

 

[Zippity]

As someone who was already making games before Patreon even became a thing, I'd be curious to hear which payment styles you're talking about. We're okay the topic is about adult games? I'd love to hear about those payment styles cause I'm all open about offering people more possibilities. (Also, some folks? I just told you that 80% of my monthly new patrons are people pledging/unpledging right away and you say it's just "some folks"?)

I'd also like to add that your whole point of "paying once" is just incompatible with a game funding anyway. It COULD work with someone doing it as hobby (and I'm not even sure it would work for long). But for people living from it? You'd get $2,000 one month and the next one you'd only get $500. "Ah, fuck, but I have 5 people to pay... So, here's your money, here's yours and yours... Ah... not only do I have $0 left to live this month but I also had to use my own money to make sure my collaborators all get paid." And then what? You eat stones for a whole months praying every evening that people are nice enough to make a single-time donation so you can eat next month?

Patreon and other sites are intended as sites where fans and supporters can DONATE money to a given artist, poet, book author, comic maker, developer, etc. to help support their hobby... It's not designed as a place for business' to receive payments for services rendered and products made... Donations prior to the advent of sites like Patreon used to ask for donations in varying ways... You could make a one time donation, or perhaps setup donation payments over a specified period of time, or what you see nowadays with donating via monthly subscription with no limit on when it will end until the person donating manually stopped the subscription... Crowd Sourcing on the internet is not a thing that has existed since the Internet went online... It was something that is more or less a more recent way for people to gain money to fund whatever project it is that they are working on... Be it art, designing t-shirts, developing a new trading card game, etc...

Streamers jumped on the donation bandwagon before most hobby adult VN/Game creators... And over the years, time and time again, I've listened to some of the more famous ones, and they've said that when it comes to donations they prefer no time limit subscriptions because that is where they receive the most money over time because people sometimes forget their paying that subscription... And even it they just forget it for a couple months, it's still money in the pocket... This same logic applies to anyone else using a similar donation subscription payment system... Sure, one time donations are still completely welcome, but even just streamers are banking on sub's more, and not for stability but just to get more money in the end...

But you don't see that with sites like Patreon, as they do not OFFER varying donation methods... And again, i'm not saying that it's a bad thing... All I was originally saying when I first replied to this thread, is that some (not all) developers are banking on folks who forget... Hoping it occurs as often as possible to keep the money flow going...

On your other point of living purely off of Donations as means of survival... It's a very poor way to finance your life and existence... Donations are inherently chaotic in nature, as they are just donations... It's not like a normal business where you are charging a fee for a product and/or service that is highly needed and desired over very lengthy periods of time... Such as cable television, or Amazon Prime service, or online classes, the electric bill, your internet service provider, and so on... Those are actual companies providing a service/product to the greater masses, and through Public Relations and Advertisements they can keep the money coming in over the long haul, usually with much more predictability and stability then their donation counterparts...

It's why this market is far more Hobby based then Professional Company based development... Sure, you can make money if you produce something worthy of many folks willing to donate, but it's not as reliable for income to support your day to day financial needs in order to survive... If you are relying on donations to survive, it's like asking for charity...

Donations by definition are " something that is given to a charity, especially a sum of money" or " a gift someone gives to a cause they believe in"...

Donation based income is not a form of Stable Income over the long haul, just look at how many Charitable Non-Profit Organizations go belly up over the long haul, and they have non-profit laws on their side... Donations for services and goods are considered Taxable Income, which is why sites like Patreon and so forth are required by law to inform the IRS (or other similar institution depending on your country of origin) when your monthly donation amount goes over a given threshold...

In the end, and this is the last post I'll do on this subject, is that you can not rely on donations as a means of stable income over the long haul unless you are lucky enough to be so good at what your doing, that it keeps folks willing to even keep making donations in the first place... It does work out for some folks, but for most it never will...

Zip

 

[Xenoga'me]

I am a developer and my love is making games, especially porn games. I like to spend all my time doing this and working with love and passion. I am not an exploiter. I just want my audience to help me work for them. If my game is not their favorite, I will not give up and I will try to make my next work their favorite. This is a general formula for those who are interested in making games in this field. But it is true that there are some whose goal is trade. In this case, they will use people who are interested in making games and have creative ideas and would like to be one in this field. In fact, if there is no interest in this work, their work will not turn out well.

 

[rk-47]

i just know you are thinking of icstor when you wrote this lol

 

[Droid Productions]

I know most of these games are free and supporting them on patreon is optional

MOBA's or any other f2p game for that matter release a game, and then do updates to add new content (chars, etc.). the new characters that get introduced into the game aren't WIP. the game itself isn't considered as an unfinished game and gets updated forever.

"Game developers who make Patreon/fan funded games released for free are exploiting gamers... they should all be more like F2P games?"



I'm going to go have a lie down, my head hurts

 

[researchpurposes]

Yeah most of em are scumbags who do this.

 

[Crimson Delight Games]

Even professional dev studios and publishers have issues with project management. It's no wonder that amateur (porn) devs find themselves in even more quicksand. But it's doubtful that most devs are malicious or dishonest - usually it's feature creep that makes them forever chase that magical v1.0.

Still, patrons can always opt out if they believe they're being misled.

And having read some people's testimonies on F95, it seems a lot of them don't mind supporting even unfinished games and their favorite devs if it means getting new content for whatever game they think deserves their money. So, there really are no losers in this situation, as anyone can opt out at any time.

What's sadder is how project (mis)management buries promising games that could've been so amazing had their devs not gotten derailed for whatever reason.