A lot of time with piracy it's people attempting to try a game and they'll often buy it if they are pleased with it. That's not always the case, some people are just pirates, some people may enjoy it enough to play it but not enough to buy it, and some people just may not have the ability to pay for it. Things are different here since the vast majority of these games are not available on other platforms and they're funded via patreon so people may be less apt to subscribe to said patreon developers because there's nothing keeping most devs holding to a schedule. For every developer like N_Taii, Team NLT, and you have five or six dozen Gunsmoke Games, ICSTOR, and Dark Cookie situations where development is always delayed, buggy, or missing half the promised content, or goes years without updates because of "burn out", or gets wrapped up in technical problems that take years to finish. Then you'll have developers like Team Sad Crab who seem to specialize in blue balling their audience with a pittance of content across years of development.
Donating to a patreon developer is a seemingly easy choice but it's far easier to get burned than it is to find one that is worthwhile. Dark Cookie is a great example of that, four years ago Summertime Saga, while not speedy on the updates, put out consistent updates with worthwhile content. Fast forward to today and its "tech update" outlasted the pandemic, it's been two years since any actual story update, and six months since the last update with very little progress on the completion ticker. That is par for the course for a lot of patreon developers and that's why it's hard to justify supporting a patreon developer. Which is why it does suck to see an update leak early for a game like HC3, as N_Taii isn't piggybacking on a popular IP to bring in support, he's not using the standard big tit barbie dolls that are passed around and tweaked slightly for most Ren'Py games, and the HC games are not designed to just smack the player in the face with SEXITY SEX SEX. Henteria Chronicles is not like most projects here and while I have no issue at all with piracy, I do wish the updates wouldn't just get sharted out as soon as they drop.
Donating to a patreon developer is a seemingly easy choice but it's far easier to get burned than it is to find one that is worthwhile. Dark Cookie is a great example of that, four years ago Summertime Saga, while not speedy on the updates, put out consistent updates with worthwhile content. Fast forward to today and its "tech update" outlasted the pandemic, it's been two years since any actual story update, and six months since the last update with very little progress on the completion ticker. That is par for the course for a lot of patreon developers and that's why it's hard to justify supporting a patreon developer. Which is why it does suck to see an update leak early for a game like HC3, as N_Taii isn't piggybacking on a popular IP to bring in support, he's not using the standard big tit barbie dolls that are passed around and tweaked slightly for most Ren'Py games, and the HC games are not designed to just smack the player in the face with SEXITY SEX SEX. Henteria Chronicles is not like most projects here and while I have no issue at all with piracy, I do wish the updates wouldn't just get sharted out as soon as they drop.