@Babus you should not hide any content behind paywall, that usually turn off more people rather than help you get more support, take a look to icstor (5100 patreons and milfy is one of the most pirated games, yet still many of us support him
) or any other dev that is at the top of patreon games........ and if only you could make all the chapters into one full game it will be better than each chapter having different .exe
After saying that, congrats for the game, it seems pretty good so far
Dev here!
I myself am not very fond of paywalls. Before becoming a dev, I hated them too and made a promise of not using them if it wasn't totally necessary.
But the thing is, they seem to be for me.
Now, I know there are games that don't have paywalls and are financially successful at Patreon. That's why one of my earliest games was completely paywall-free: I thought that, if other people could achieve a stable income without hidden content, so could I.
I invested several months on that game. It was a small parody game, but had a relatively high production value. When I released it, it got pretty good reviews and it was played by a lot of people -it's my 2nd most played game in Newgrounds. That game is "A date with Earth-Chan", by the way.
And man, what a shame when despite of all that I didn't get more than a 3 patron count increase.
I still had a job at that time and had to develop that game during the nights, which wasn't the most healthy lifestyle, so after that letdown I considered to just stop my short indie developer career.
But I had invested so much time on that engine that I decided to give it another try. I reused the framework I had built to make the first episode of Into the Forest, and I put a paywall for a single CG scene (there are 9 CGs in each chapter).
This time the results weren't the same. Around 90 people decided to pledge, which was a huge relief: I discovered that paywalls could save my dream, even if I didn't like them.
So I continued making more episodes with a little paywall on them, and each of one strengthened my income until the point I could leave my job and focus my efforts on Babus Games. By the way, that was not the only effect I noticed by putting paywalls: interestingly enough, people were engaging more with me, and because of piracy, I started appearing in a lot of more sites (like f95), which made my games more popular.
I still don't have a very solid income, but at least I'm not anxious anymore of not being able to pay my bills. Understand that removing paywalls now would be a VERY risky move for me, as I could easily lose my economic stability again. I don't put paywalls because of greed: I put them because I want to develop games, and they are reliable. Being an indie game developer is not a super lucrative thing by any means: it's hard to find oxygen to keep going.
Oh, and by the way, even if I put paywalls, I'm not against piracy sites. As I said earlier, piracy kinda helped me to get a bit more known in the adult game scene, and I never noticed any economic losses because of it. But I can't be the one to put the full builds for free as I suspect I would be delivering the wrong message. As long as the player is aware that I need support to keep making games, it's fine, even if they decide not to pledge anything.
Well, that's everything! I don't know if it was convincing enough for you guys. I just wanted to share a bit of my worries and experiences as a developer!