I totally get what you're saying and I've struggled with this before. I don't share everything that I've purchased, but there are reasons I don't feel guilty about sharing the content that I do.
When I was younger, nobody did modding with the expectation of making money. People would donate money to help with server costs and other expenses, but nobody made money doing it.
You could say that scenedata and character cards are a form of artistry instead of modding and that would be valid. Paying for these items is just like the microtransactions that exist in most mainstream games that allow people to buy exclusive skins and such. The problem with this comparison is that Illusion does not allow people to profit by selling the content made in their game. All of the Patreon and Fanbox accounts made for Honey Select and Koikatsu are illegal.
The biggest problem I have with people selling their content is simply the price point and level of entitlement. If you expect me to buy your content then there are three things I expect from you:
1. You should provide a decent amount of free content so I can see if your content works on my game and confirm that it is well made.
2. You should be producing content on a frequent basis, or you should have a large catalogue of previously made material that will justify the amount of money I spend.
3. You should actually be a skilled artist with a reasonable level of experience.
The thing that I absolutely despise is that paywalled content is becoming more prevalent than free content. There are only a handful of artists out there that produce content worth paying for IMO, and everybody else just needs to wake up and realize that nobody should be paying money to support your hobby.
Kuo is one of the few artists that I support but I'm not sure if I'm going to support him anymore. Although his content is a bit macabre for my tastes, he was one of the few who was making decent animations, at a high rate of production, and at a reasonable price ($4/mo). However, last month he announced that somebody leaked one of his scenes and he announced as per this post:
I don't have a lot of sympathy for this sentiment, what exactly did he think was going to happen when he released erotic content on the internet? Does he not realize that almost half of the world's bandwidth is dedicated to sharing pirated porn? Piracy can be harmful to small and large porn producers alike but it can actually be more helpful to smaller producers because it gives them exposure they would never have otherwise. I would have never become a subscriber to Kuo if I didn't download his pirated material and was able to test it out myself. These content creators need to realize that piracy is an inevitable result of their success, but piracy also broadens their audience in ways that paid content could never achieve.
I'm not going to pretend that piracy is a victimless crime but you may also notice that the Porn industry continues to thrive, and Onlyfans models still continue to make millions of dollars. If somebody isn't emotionally prepared to deal with piracy then they are not prepared to sell digital content.
