It's just that easy! For every episode of anime you don't watch you can make a game!
Huge majority of porn developers here nowadays don't even care and just want money for little work!
- Thread starter MissBumhole
- Start date
It's just that easy! For every episode of anime you don't watch you can make a game!
1. I'm curious: which developers do you support financially?
2. When developing a software, the early offerings are often "quick and dirty" with many technical compromises and engineering hacks. As the software grows, these hacks either can't scale or maintaining them is too lengthy and/or error prone, hence developers are forced to spend more time upgrading of the game's infrastructure than they did initially.
3. Quality which might be acceptable in early phases is often seen as too low once the game grows and becomes more popular. Increasing the quality (renders, animations, sound etc) is also time consuming.
4. And yes: some people are just assholes. Developers are people too.
This is a bit of a strawman though, isn't it? I mean you've set up your selfless developer archetype and the evil ne'er-do-well player, but are you really claiming that this scenario is some kind of absolute?
I can understand getting defensive, you are presumably a good dev that has poured your heart and soul into projects and likely been criticised by sceptical consumers. But can you really blame them, having seen the quality and output of some of the creators you are competing against?
Whether it's amateur devs overpromising and underdelivering, or folding entirely when they realise it's hard work, or some of the outright scam projects just ticking along for years without really producing anything consumers have good reason to be sceptical. As others have highlighted this often results in consumers accusing well meaning devs because your average Patreon subscriber doesn't have the domain knowledge needed to gauge how hard achieving certain goals may be, or how to estimate expected output against the projects revenue (which they can guess at anyway).
If I were you I would be less irritated about your customers poorly informed feedback and more irritated by unscrupulous devs generating mistrust amongst your potential customer base, not to mention crowd funding sites like Patreon encouraging it so they can take their cut.
If some of these crowd funding sites made even cursory steps toward keeping bad actors off their platforms it would go a long way toward assuaging consumer's concerns and probably make life a lot easier for devs like yourself too. Not to mention more profitable, since these bad projects are siphoning off consumer funds and goodwill that could be directed toward your own.
Preface, I'm not a dev. But in general high quality work on these games does have a hefty cost to it. Not always direct cost, but indirect like time spent on it vs when rent is due or food shopping is needing to be done. Rendering also takes time, actually working in the animation software doing poses and facial expressions and such takes time(Especially if you want it to look better than passable).
And this exponentially grows as the game gets bigger and things in many areas need work. Milfy City for example, lots of work needed in several places before it had to be shelved/rewritten because of dumb patreon coercion. Each area would need the same amount of time investment as the rest. All the while, both fans and haters flood the discord and this site with various memeage of "Soon™" or "Never™".
Look at Summertime Saga, Cookie streams practically every day showing his side of the work load, he talks about things happening in his home life and such casually while meticulously adding shade lines to boobs and thighs. Dev work isn't construction work, so it isn't constant moving and laborious, but there's a lot of tedium and a lot of waiting involved.
As someone that grew up in an era without porn games, I say be a touch grateful that such exists at all these days. Spicy games have come a LONG way, and this is still fresh territory to explore and settle into. There's a market for it, and there will inevitably be opportunists coming in. But one must take into account how much work goes into the high quality stuff as well as the drama behind the scenes slowing it down.
And this exponentially grows as the game gets bigger and things in many areas need work. Milfy City for example, lots of work needed in several places before it had to be shelved/rewritten because of dumb patreon coercion. Each area would need the same amount of time investment as the rest. All the while, both fans and haters flood the discord and this site with various memeage of "Soon™" or "Never™".
Look at Summertime Saga, Cookie streams practically every day showing his side of the work load, he talks about things happening in his home life and such casually while meticulously adding shade lines to boobs and thighs. Dev work isn't construction work, so it isn't constant moving and laborious, but there's a lot of tedium and a lot of waiting involved.
As someone that grew up in an era without porn games, I say be a touch grateful that such exists at all these days. Spicy games have come a LONG way, and this is still fresh territory to explore and settle into. There's a market for it, and there will inevitably be opportunists coming in. But one must take into account how much work goes into the high quality stuff as well as the drama behind the scenes slowing it down.
- Oct 1, 2018
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Of course it was a strawman. Most arguments on this site are strawmen. Plus I am a grade A smartass, just ask my wife.
But the point is valid, to an extent. I have no problem with people getting upset with the developers who are milkers, and yeah, they make it more difficult for the rest of us, but I have no recourse for this, as I am not one of their patrons, and therefore cannot stop supporting them.
I just find it absurd for someone to claim the 'Huge Majority' of developers are milkers, and that they do very little work. So I made an absurd statement back to prove how ridiculous it was. Plus, I am an asshole, so there is that.
The world needs more assholes, preferably honest and sarcastic ones.
- Oct 1, 2018
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Not sure how honest I am, but I will claim the sarcastic part of that.
That's fair, although I'm not quite so sure it's a completely absurd statement. A lot of projects on sites like Patreon, SubscribeStar and Itch these days are quite low effort and trying to find the good projects hidden amongst them all is an arduous task (and part of the reason I use F95). It's hard to get figures though given the subjective nature of what makes a "bad" project and the fact that you can't really scrape any useful data from those sites.
Either way I don't really see devs or consumers as being at fault. As you say you can't do anything about it as a dev, and consumers sure as hell have no hope. This is completely on the platforms for not moderating content which they'll never start doing so long as they're profiting from the situation. Even Steam, which have a rather thorough review process, are really hit and miss so far as their reviews in the adult category are concerned.
Liars say they're honest. Honest say they're liars.
Difference is the latter is more trustworthy. Cheers!
We should also take into account that not every dev will have a universally appealing artistic talent. Some are just doing the best they can with their innate talent or lack thereof.
- Oct 1, 2018
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This could be true, though if you mean by 'bad' a project that is low effort, or not well done, those rarely make any money, so really can't be considered 'milkers'. Also, what some consider 'bad' others may consider 'magnificent'. Hey....it could happen.
And I am not sure you can blame the platform. They are a tool, nothing more. A way for developers, the vast majority of which are NOT porn developers at least on Patreon, to get their product to the public. It is up to the consumer to judge what is and isn't for them, not for the platform to determine what you should and shouldn't support. These platforms have rules, and as long as the developer is following those rules, be it CP or whatever, then they shouldn't intervene is what the public has access to. And yeah, of course, they are in it for profit. Unlike many developers, this isn't a hobby for them, it is a business.
In the end, it is up to the supporters to decide what they will and won't support. It is their money to spend how they see fit. You want the 'milkers' to go away, then those supporters will have to stop supporting them. Otherwise, it will never happen.
- Jan 24, 2021
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My take is that good devs will automatically show accountability and consistency.
DPC being a good example of such a dev. Inceton and his many aliases (heh) are also one of the devs i know who are very consistent and hence, have strong support. Most of the top avns are by such devs like cari, philly and zetan to name a few.
It doesn't matter whether a dev is solo or a team, its all about heart and open communications imo.
DPC being a good example of such a dev. Inceton and his many aliases (heh) are also one of the devs i know who are very consistent and hence, have strong support. Most of the top avns are by such devs like cari, philly and zetan to name a few.
It doesn't matter whether a dev is solo or a team, its all about heart and open communications imo.
That's certainly true, but when I talk about "scam" games I'm usually thinking of those that are at least somewhat misleading in their marketing.
Generally that falls into two camps; those that actually release games but they are objectively poor quality and those that just don't release anything.
Those in the first camp generally churn out games at quite a fast rate, they'll include a few good looking renders for use in trailers/previews but the actual game will only have a few such scenes and they'll be 1-2 second animated loops. Gameplay will invariably be buggy and/or non-existent. OnlyFap Simulator is a good example of what I mean by this, they released the last two games within a few weeks of one another which is frankly hilarious.
The latter group are a bit harder to judge, some just aren't very popular so they perhaps can't work on it full time. Others might be relatively new devs so perhaps they need to go back and rework stuff a few times and that might not be visible to end users. Others however have been on Patreon since it launched, have thousands of subs but constantly shifting roadmaps and their main focus is on doing stuff that will get more subs. Project Helius is the most egregious example of this. It predates Patreon and is one of their top earners yet the current state of the game is a single map, three playable characters and you can walk about and play animations.
If a game has an art style that is personally unappealing it can simply be avoided. Games like the above are a bit trickier.
See above in regard to what I would, personally, class as a 'bad' project. Naturally there is some subjectivity there but a lot of them do make money, precisely because it's difficult for most users to judge those projects pre-purchase.
As for not blaming the platforms... I would be more inclined to give them a pass if they gave consumers the tools they would need to avoid low quality projects. Patreon doesn't even have a review system, you can't see most posts or comments until you subscribe and devs can simply remove any negative feedback regardless. How is an end user meant to gauge the quality of a project before subscribing with such limited information?
Personally the solution I found is to simply pirate projects I'm dubious of before supporting them; but that is hardly a scalable solution and I doubt it's something you'd want to encourage all end users to do.
- Oct 1, 2018
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Your points are valid. But, for Patreon (I keep using them as that is the one I am familiar with) if a consumer supports the dev for, say, 10 USD. That is monthly. If they don't like what they get, then they can unsupport the following month. End of story. For steam, I guess it is different. Although, I do believe you can get a refund there as well, though I may be wrong about that. Not sure about how the other platforms work in regards to this. Regardless, it is up to the consumer to make those decisions.
But if you sub to a project like the above on Patreon, even if you unsub the very next month, you've still just given $x to a project just to test the waters. And how many months, or years, would it take for them to figure out that devs like Helius are perhaps not spending those funds as intended?
That just isn't a particularly desirable model for consumers. Those consumers will get annoyed and they will either exit the market entirely, reducing the potential customer base for devs like yourself, or they will heavily criticise devs moving forward out of a sense of paranoia that they may be doing the same. Which is exactly what you see with threads like these.
There is a reason that we regulate industries and it's due to a power disparity between buyer and seller, one key aspect of this is information. If consumers don't have sufficient information they cannot make informed purchasing decisions so I think stating it's simply "up to the consumer" is a little disingenuous. They simply cannot make an informed choice with the information provided.
If you are making good games you should realistically be pushing for this even hard than consumers are, after all this is money that should by all rights be going to devs like yourself that is getting siphoned off via these practices.
- Oct 1, 2018
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Point taken. However, the information is out there for people to investigate before spending their money. Doing a google search on the game before subbing and doing a little bit of research of reviews would show them the information they need. People do this for most purchases they make (or at least I would hope so). You don't see ads for Coke warning that it could cause diabetes, people have to find that out on their own.
And yeah, it does make it harder on the developers here and elsewhere when we have to deal with this, but I go back to the main point I made. That saying most of the devs are scammers who are fucking over the players, on purpose, is just not true. Some are, but they are far from the majority.
- Sep 30, 2017
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I'm probably just being annoying, but this isn't entirely accurate. Sure, for well known products and producers this is the case, but for adult games there's not nearly as much information publicly available, especially for smaller devs. Supporting an upcoming dev on Patreon (or through any subscription-based method, which is prone to 'milking') is a bit of a leap of faith in the sense that you just have to trust that the product will come out the way you're hoping.
Malicious producers can use your faith by keeping up the appearance of being trustworthy, and until people get fed up and vocal about it (thereby providing information for future potential consumers) the project can be milked.
- Oct 1, 2018
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You are correct. However, for most of these smaller devs, they are only bringing in a few dollars each month. So I am not sure you could call that 'milking'. And once a game is making enough money for the developer to do it full time, I am pretty sure there will be information that could be found on it.
But I do get your point.
- Mar 23, 2022
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Damn, I'm a bit new to the porn game scene but a "huge majority" would mean over like 70% which seems like a vast overestimation. I know there are some infamous examples that have been passed around but a huge majority (as the OP would put it) of game devs aren't that greedy, heck I'm seeing a lot of the new gen of porn devs working for maybe a couple dozen to couple hundred dollars. Which idk where y'all live but in the US, it is an absolute abysmal amount of money for the work game devs have to put in. Will there be milkers in the industry? Yes, always. Will it ever be a huge majority? Possibly but it hasn't gotten anywhere near that point as of now.
- Nov 7, 2021
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Isn't this very issue why places like F95 exist in the first place?
Some of these games aren't even worth $1 and it'll definitely show. I'm personally thankful for the amount of money F95 saves me from wasting on Trashware. There are a hand full of creators I fully support because they show that they give a damn about what they're making and I learned about them and they're projects through F95. Hell, F95 is why I wanna make my own game and F95 will be the absolute first place I post it on.
The unfortunate bit is that you have no control over what happens with a developer. Be it Personal life issues or they just lack the motivation to keep going on with a project. Even if the Developer is great anything can happen and a project can be dropped immediately. It's really a gamble when you're dealing with garage style indie developers.
You gotta be more vigilant and understand the nuisances of indie development. Support who you like but don't get attached. Shoot your ropes in glee and move forward.
Some of these games aren't even worth $1 and it'll definitely show. I'm personally thankful for the amount of money F95 saves me from wasting on Trashware. There are a hand full of creators I fully support because they show that they give a damn about what they're making and I learned about them and they're projects through F95. Hell, F95 is why I wanna make my own game and F95 will be the absolute first place I post it on.
The unfortunate bit is that you have no control over what happens with a developer. Be it Personal life issues or they just lack the motivation to keep going on with a project. Even if the Developer is great anything can happen and a project can be dropped immediately. It's really a gamble when you're dealing with garage style indie developers.
You gotta be more vigilant and understand the nuisances of indie development. Support who you like but don't get attached. Shoot your ropes in glee and move forward.