So basically, reading the comments, this update was a huge disappointment for Halfway House lovers, and I should just skip it and wait until next update (in 2023)?
This game was so much better when it started. Frequent updates, and great characters and dialog. What happened?
Yeah. But i think its the players fault. Ppl nowadays are praising devs that dont deliver any sex scenes and/or that takes ages to release an update..look Deluca family, Summers gone, A wife and a mother and so on... its the new normal, and who wants sex scenes and/or more frequent updates are labeled as idiots, dumb, pervs and etc. Will not take long until 1 update p/year and sex just only after 2 becomes the standard.
I don't think you can completely blame it on purely praise alone. In reality, I think it's the combination of the incentive to stretch it out and one's natural instinct to procrastinate. I am a huge procrastinator and I'd imagine that with the payment model of Patreon it can be very easy to let deadlines slip and eventually get into the habit of it, especially when you have a community that is extremely kind and supports you even when you miss the deadlines you give them. Not to mention the impact on your income is relatively marginal unless it gets to the point of absurdity. If it was all the randoms on F95 praising the game and the actual Patrons were furious this stuff wouldn't fly. I mean this thing seems to happen with pretty much every game on here that gets big. Which is kind of ironic as well because I swear for at least half of them, the first Patreon sub-goal always involves or at least implies that hitting said goal would increase the rate of updates.
Obviously, there are exceptions, but there is too much of a correlation between Patreon income and the rate of updates for it to be a mere coincidence. The positive of the Patreon model is that it creates a financial incentive for people to make great games like this. The downside is that at a certain level of income/popularity the best move for many devs seems to make each update take as long as they can possibly get away with.
Since they are getting paid monthly the longer each update takes, the more they make off of each update. Not to mention it means less work for them to make that money. With the funding model of Patreon, they could make an update every single month and in 6 months they would make basically the same amount they would make if they only released a single update. Sure, you can argue that they would get more patrons from having a faster update schedule but it would not be proportional to the extra effort that it would take to keep that kind of update cadence. Not to mention since due to sites like F95, the game is constantly being played by new people, so they will continue to gain patrons regardless (although potentially at a slower rate). Basically, the funding model of Patreon makes "milking" a very easy and attractive business strategy for devs. Plus, there are many patrons who have no problem being milked or at least will do whatever mental gymnastics necessary to convince themselves that they aren't being. Because each person is only giving a couple dollars a month the developer only really needs to provide like $5 of value a month to each patron in order for them to feel as though they are getting somewhat equal value in return. If 1 person was giving you $1000 a month they would most likely expect a lot more in return than 1 wallpaper a month. But if instead, you have 1000 people giving you $1 a month, a wallpaper will seem pretty fair.
While Patreon and funding models like it have their issues, for the moment they seem to be the best funding model we have for this kind of content. Personally, I'd like developers and artists to be able to make a living off of their work, even if it means that some people may end up abusing the system and the trust of those who support them. All things considered, this funding model isn't too bad especially since with sites like F95 not only are devs able to make money from making these games but it is still possible for everyone to experience the games even if they aren't able/willing to pay for them (everyone wins!?). It just kinda sucks that time after time the best adult games I find on F95 end up taking longer and longer and longer and longer and longer to get updates. This is just me considering the whole Patreon thing in general not a dig at this dev specifically. But at a certain point, the pattern gets too hard to ignore.