VN Ren'Py Harem Hotel [v0.18.2] [Runey]

[ankhtar]

I mean... if the guy is dealing with some headache-inducing shenanigans, especially of the legal variety that involves lawyers, then he's definitely not going to be in the right frame of mind that one needs to be in to do creative work, especially with a family loss on top of it. People who say this much aren't being white knights or enablers, they're stating the flippin' obvious. Heck, for the sake of argument, even if they were being white knights, I like to believe he has earned at least that much tolerance after several years of consistency.

I don't believe he's milking either. The reasons for this delay are clearly stated in his patreon (excluding specific details that he's not obligated to put out there for the world to see, given the personal nature of said details), so people who choose to continue their pledge are not being milked, they're still voluntarily supporting the project in question, despite the setbacks.
Once again, for the sake of argument, let's imagine the guy just up and poofed one day without giving any reason as to why. At that point, pledgers could simply cancel their pledge and move on. That's it, it's that simple. The fact that this is even being argued, assuming it isn't trolling (which is likely the case), baffles me.

 

[kenny]

ok

Do you know what a person with integrity would do if he knows he can't work on his patreon content for an unforeseeable amount of time would do? He would pause charges. Aroma did that, exga has been paused for 3 months now dealing with other work. But why do that when you can post some sob story and keep on doing whatever while reaping the dough. And let's not pretend his work hasn't been slipping for a while now.

 

[DigDug69]

Do you know what a person with integrity would do if he knows he can't work on his patreon content for an unforeseeable amount of time would do? He would pause charges. Aroma did that, exga has been paused for 3 months now dealing with other work. But why do that when you can post some sob story and keep on doing whatever while reaping the dough. And let's not pretend his work hasn't been slipping for a while now.

And yet, your whining about it will not change a thing, which should be obvious by now.
Some people who are subscribers have commented in the past that they understand the problems, and do not care, because it is only a couple of bucks a month to support someone whose work they respect.

It's the subscribers decision whether they keep the support going, or cancel it.
No amount of complaining by anyone will ever change that.

 

[Harkonnan]

I'm not one for putting down devs but in this case it is justified. I've been playing this game since there was only one floor in the hotel and no bar. Updates were MONTHLY. Every month had a good amount of quality content. Then he did the elven island update and things started to go sideways. Updates started getting farther apart. First 2 months then 3 months saying there would be "more content per release" and for a while that was true. Then the content started to slip and people got upset and he started losing patrons. So then the Patreon update spam started and public releases got pushed back. We got to the point where he's almost doubled the amount of Patreon tiers (each with it's own release) and full releases are almost 5 months apart. And then you act surprised that this happened. Honestly I think he just gave up and rather than ending this (or maybe he doesn't know how to end it) and starting something new he's just going to squeeze as much as he can out of this and hopefully figure it out later.

 

[jamdan]

The previous update had 52 scenes. The next update will likely be similarly sized. This game is huge, the uncompressed version is over 100gigs.

Of course making a game of this scale takes time.

But nobody actually cares about that. It's the same thing I posted before (that got deleted somehow). People are upset the game they like isn't updated frequently enough for their liking.

So they have to complain about it. Instead of finding something else to do with their time.

If you'd care to be informed, Runey posts updates publicly on his pages, Discord and twitter. He also posts here, or maybe used to until these types of posters started to pop up, and he joined the ranks of all the other devs who have more or less left this site due to toxicity.

The game is also publicly available for free. How much money Runey makes isn't relevant, people who donate donate because they want to. Nobody cares about how random people spend their $5 a month, be it on games, subscriptions of whatever other thing you can spend $5 on.

 

[Opa Wants]

That's why it's called DONATIONS, You give if you want to but it is not necessary. Runey has said before that ALL DONATIONS are greatly appreciated but the game WILL REMAIN FREE.

 

[Lolicon Kami]

Do teachers, police officers, doctors, or any other ordinary jobs typically take a year off, and keep drawing a full salary when a relative dies? Nope.

And you don't think that's a problem? Cause I personally think that it's because of our rotten capitalist system today, and good for the dev for breaking out of this loop.

And you may think your argument is novel, but it's been used throughout the ages.

Antebellum Era:

Are any ordinary African Americans exempt from slavery? Nope. So why should the African Americans up North be emancipated? Talk about entitlement

1900s:

Do mothers, wives, teachers or any other ordinary female workers have the right to vote? Nope. So why are the suffragists arguing for voting rights? Talk about entitlement

1930s:

Do teachers, police officers, doctors, or any other ordinary jobs have a minimum wage? Nope. So why should we guarantee a minimum wage for every occupation? Talk about entitlement

You on the wrong side of history, bud

 

[Harkonnan]

A lot of people seem to be focusing on the money aspect such as

That's why it's called DONATIONS, You give if you want to but it is not necessary. Runey has said before that ALL DONATIONS are greatly appreciated but the game WILL REMAIN FREE.

In this case I agree with TamreeFugar. It is by choice, but for me, it is irrelevant.

I really don't care about the patreon or donations. What is pissing me off is that this game was a monthly release game, but now it takes 5 months to get a release that's only marginally larger by comparison to what we used to get in a month. He didn't change the game engine, he is still using HS for his renders so there is no reason for this. Now he has this family issue, and immigration and whatever else, which is shitty and I feel bad if it's all true, but with his track record I am calling bullshit on this. I really think it's just a sob story to get out of working on the game for whatever reason. I want those quality monthly releases back.

 

[Lolicon Kami]

monthly release game

No it wasn't. It used to be once every three months back when Runey FIRST started it, with much shittier graphics, shorter updates, some super cringy dialogue, some boring tropes thrown in the mix, and kicking off from zero dollars in subscription.

Runey eventually started upping his quality, which slid the development down to give or take once every four months, starting from the second year that HH was in development. That minor 1-month delay also coincided with a huge leap in graphics and story telling.

Eventually Runey started re-making his original content while simultaneously working on new content. That's why HH now looks good from the start; because Runey updated all the shittier graphics and purged the cringy/trope dialogue fuckfest that was going down in the beginning chapters of HH.

Now Runey may be starting to run out of gas, but still, it's once every five months with a huge ass load of content each update.

That's a little slower than the best of the best indie devs on this site, such as Carbdis or Selebus.

That's also on par (and maybe a little faster) than time-established, successful, but not elite-tier studios still doing really well on patreon, like taifun riders or pink tea (who's been making a living off of porn for almost a decade now)

It's also a hell of a whole lot faster than the Patreon porn juggernauts like fenoxo, who makes 30K (30 FUCKING THOUSAND DOLLARS) a month, and usually produces half of HH's one update in a given year. Who also took a two year break because flash got killed by adobe. while somehow not losing much money.

So in conclusion, Runey used to be an elite-tier dev with mad speed. Now, with personal complications in his life, he has unfortunately slowed down to - gasp - the pace of a run-of-the-mill industry veteran. The horror!

Source: itch.io

 

[DigDug69]

A lot of people seem to be focusing on the money aspect such as

In this case I agree with TamreeFugar. It is by choice, but for me, it is irrelevant.

I really don't care about the patreon or donations. What is pissing me off is that this game was a monthly release game, but now it takes 5 months to get a release that's only marginally larger by comparison to what we used to get in a month. He didn't change the game engine, he is still using HS for his renders so there is no reason for this. Now he has this family issue, and immigration and whatever else, which is shitty and I feel bad if it's all true, but with his track record I am calling bullshit on this. I really think it's just a sob story to get out of working on the game for whatever reason. I want those quality monthly releases back.

Runey got a real job, which meant less free time to work on the game, so of course, releases had to slow down if Runey was going to have any kind of a life, outside of working.
And yes, it was every three months.

 

[Lolicon Kami]

Runey got a real job, which meant less free time to work on the game, so of course, releases had to slow down if Runey was going to have any kind of a life, outside of working.
And yes, it was every three months.

Wait Runey's working a real job now as well

Didn't know about this. Source?

 

[DigDug69]

Wait Runey's working a real job now as well

Didn't know about this. Source?

Well, he was. I remember something about a post where he talked about now being able to use some of his learned skills in a job, outside of Harem Hotel.

 

[Fantasy Catharsis]

A lot of people seem to be focusing on the money aspect such as

In this case I agree with TamreeFugar. It is by choice, but for me, it is irrelevant.

I really don't care about the patreon or donations. What is pissing me off is that this game was a monthly release game, but now it takes 5 months to get a release that's only marginally larger by comparison to what we used to get in a month. He didn't change the game engine, he is still using HS for his renders so there is no reason for this. Now he has this family issue, and immigration and whatever else, which is shitty and I feel bad if it's all true, but with his track record I am calling bullshit on this. I really think it's just a sob story to get out of working on the game for whatever reason. I want those quality monthly releases back.

I swear it's this level of entitlement that I fear is one of the reasons that kill game dev motivation and ultimately leads to you blokes speaking this sort of shit into existence. Leave the guy to sort his shit out, you lot are even making up numbers at this point!

 

[Opa Wants]

I agree but since they wish to complain all we can do is:
1. ignore them
2. hope Runey sees these shit posts and give them a piece of his mind
3. hope the site moderators take down those DUMB ASS posts for GOOD

 

[Lolicon Kami]

I agree but since they wish to complain all we can do is:
1. ignore them
2. hope Runey sees these shit posts and give them a piece of his mind
3. hope the site moderators take down those DUMB ASS posts for GOOD

Or runey sees that for ever hater, there's 5 fans out there rooting for him

Go Runey!

 

[Sir_EatsALot]

I would not call the people white knight types for something like this.
Moving takes time, especially when it comes to moving to another country.
Grieving takes time, and that time can vary, depending on how close the people were to each other.
Dealing with lawyers takes time, especially when it is dealing with estate issues.
Immagration takes time, because you have to stay current, and deal with paperwork, that never seems to end in some countrys.
All of that can easily destroy a devs muse, and make it impossible to release good work.
Lets face it, no one can do a good job, if they are not in the mood to do it at that time.

And then you have the issue on top of all of that where a dev has to be able to get into the right frame of mind to create something good.
Sure, if they really pushed themselves, even if they were not able to get into the right frame of mind, they might be able to release something, but it would likely be small, and complete shit, compared to their previous work.
Which in itself, would cause people to whine and complain about it.

I don't think that's the point he was trying to make. I think what he meant was normal people don't get multi year paid vacation to get the mood right. If any dev wants to take time off to reflect or whatever, it's only right they pause the patreon. Why collect payment while not doing the work and preying on peoples' good will? I think that's what the commenter meant was the type of behavior that shouldn't be encouraged. I am not a paying supporter but I have been here long enough to see this trend with most of the now popular games. The more supporters they get, the longer the delay becomes. The passion dies out as the money starts coming in and this makes me sad.

 

[DigDug69]

I don't think that's the point he was trying to make. I think what he meant was normal people don't get multi year paid vacation to get the mood right. If any dev wants to take time off to reflect or whatever, it's only right they pause the patreon. Why collect payment while not doing the work and preying on peoples' good will? I think that's what the commenter meant was the type of behavior that shouldn't be encouraged. I am not a paying supporter but I have been here long enough to see this trend with most of the now popular games. The more supporters they get, the longer the delay becomes. The passion dies out as the money starts coming in and this makes me sad.

The dev was not taking the year off by choice.
The Dev's father died.
Then the dev got covid.
Then the dev's planned move to another country began.
Then all of the issues with immigration cropped up.
and then the legal problems of dealing with lawyers over his fathers estate.
The last being extremely difficult, and potentially long lasting, because they have to do a search and make sure that Runey's father did not owe money to anyone, before any thought could be given to dispersing the estate.
I have been through that, and it can be frustrating, and time consuming.
Unlike in the movies, it is never a case of the will being read, and bang, you get all of the stuff.
And the complexity can vary from case to case.
If money is owed, and cash is not available, you have to first liquidate assets into cash, pay off the money owed, and then you get whatever is left.
Especially when homes or land are involved.
Things like nick nacks in the house, for the most part, people can start grabbing, but art and valuable collectables and such, not so much.

None of that allows for a person to be in any condition to create what is essentially a work of art, that takes careful consideration and a clear mind to create the stories events.
If Harem Hotel was just a fapping game with sex being the main point of it, then I would agree that the dev could create something anyway, but it is not.

 

[Opa Wants]

Amen DigDug69

 

[nicholas88888]

Is this game even alive?

no he gave up move on or just play it when it is finished in 2030

 

[DigDug69]

no he gave up move on or just play it when it is finished in 2030

The messages and the beta releases on the dev's patreon account say otherwise.