The question I would ask myself I were you would be; are the other Devs on here who advised you that actually making substantial money, or do their games preform well with marketing? This alone would justify risk vs reward. The "safe" choice resulting in far less success statistically IMO does not out preform the route with higher potential reward.
Not to come across as arrogant, but I actually have worked in social media marketing for the past 9 years and have been quite successful in doing so. One of the skills I developed is pattern recognition that's why I'm suggesting this, I see how well the games preform on here with Incest, vs with vanilla only. Human psychology with these games tends to lean towards the taboo, myself included.
In my experience, and I've played a LOT of games on here would be the opposite of what they are saying. In fact if you search incest on here and then filter by views or likes, a lot of the top games on the site in general not only include incest but they are actively on Patreon making 6 figures. Summertime Saga for example has 33,867 paid members. Which includes incest as the focal point. To name one example.
Another option a lot of games use is they allow you to define the relationships in the beginning of the game, commonly using the defaults, "landlady" for mom and "roommate" for sister. Etc.
As far as the Patreon conspiracy thing, I imagine that would be illegal of them to do that and could result in litigation if proven to any discernable degree. I'd be VERY surprised if they could do anything at all about something that has nothing to do with their platform. I think the play would be to circumvent TOS, obviously not breaking any rules.
The SubscribeStar thing is true to an extent, I have heard a lot of devs say they have issues and challenges with the platform, not with incest content though but other things.
Just my opinion though and some food for thought. Either way you should do what you want to do and not let the judgement of others cloud your actions.
Hi again!
Regarding the devs who've given me advice, there's a bit of everything. Some devs earn very little and others make five figures. I think none of them include incest in their games, that's true, but it's logical they don't, and that they recommend avoiding it to prevent getting banned.
The risk vs reward factor is something I've carefully considered, but you have to understand that the risk is extremely high and not worth the potential benefit. If my game gets banned, they'd be banning something I've been working on for over two years (about a year of private development, plus over a year of public development). We're talking thousands and thousands of hours thrown away just to add an incest-related story branch, and all for a potential gain that might be high, or might not. Even if it's something highly desired by the audience, it wouldn't guarantee a boost of thousands of dollars (just to throw out a high number).
In fact, this very morning I found out that the creator of Summer Gone was recently banned from Patreon, not just the game, but the creator himself, precisely for posting incest-related content.
So yeah, the risk is just too much.
Summertime Saga, from what I've seen on its wiki, isn't technically incest either, since it's your father's friend who takes you in after he dies. She's not even a stepmother or stepsister because she never married your father. The creator was pretty clever there to avoid censorship.
In my case, I can't do that, because even if I claimed it was your stepmother and stepsister, like your father remarried, Patreon's Terms of Service have also recently banned step relationships.
I also considered the trick of letting the player choose the relationship with the characters, and I already explained earlier in this thread why that's not possible either. To do that, she'd have to be your landlady, and it wouldn't make sense for you to move to another town because your landlady had medical issues and later financial problems. I'd have to change the entire foundation of the story.
I understand the interest and the desire for incest to be included in the story, I know it's something that's heavily requested, but unless things change (and honestly, it looks like censorship is only going to get worse), I'm afraid my hands are tied.
Im locked out from further content after the 2nd day of socials class. I don't know what i did wrong or is that really the end of the games content in this current version. Since the changelog said, up to day 3
Hi! Looks like you enjoyed the game, I'm really glad to hear that.
Yes, I'm afraid you've completed all the content available in the public version, which goes up to the end of the science class. The next scene, which takes place in the infirmary, is currently available for tier 3 or 4 Patrons, and I'll be releasing it for tier 2 tomorrow (if everything goes well).
If you're really eager to continue the story, you can stop by and support me, I'm still very small and I truly need your help. Otherwise, you can wait until I finish the next update, and then I'll release the infirmary scene publicly.
