Selebus is one of the most regular and committed devs, so I wouldn't doubt that Lessons in Love will continue for a long time. Just look at the game-play, the story, and the dialog. There is nothing quick or half-assed about it. You can clearly see that this is a passion project for Selebus. Plus, he is one of the few devs that actually have regular high quality, sizeable, and regular updates.
As for whether having the game show up here helps or hurts creators, I think it goes both ways, but overall mostly positive for the dev. It undeniably helps them get patrons, since for me, all the games I personally support, I only found out through here, by playing them. I think that is the case for the majority of supporters of VNs. Players discover the game here or on other sources, play an update or two, and if they love it, and can contribute, many do so. For me personally, I contribute to devs solely to help them and encourage them to continue their games. I rarely ever log into Patreon to collect any game rewards or look at the status there, I hang around the forums here because it is more dynamic and fun, than reading and writing comments on the Patreon pages.
I subscribe to devs because I want to support them, not because I want to get the releases a few weeks early. It doesn't bother me one bit, as a subscriber, if games I support get leaked early.
Of course you will have some users that only subscribe to the patron to get the game, and then quickly unsubscribe, that aren't particularly interested in supporting the devs long term, and those who won't ever give a dollar one way or another, but those people will be around whether sites like this one exist or not. I don't think a poll like this would be welcomed by Petreon, but I bet if Selebus polled his sponsors and asked what made them want to contribute, nearly all of them would say that they found the game, here or elsewhere, played it for awhile, and then contributed to the dev because they wanted to support them, and perhaps wanted some extra perks, or to join the community on Discord, or something similar.
I totally understand how devs can be a little irritated when their game leaks before the public release, but ultimately, for every update that shows up here, means more users discovering the game, and a percentage of them, will lead to more subscribers.
Ultimately, the devs that get the most loyal fans, and thus long term subscibers, are the ones that take a little time to hang around here once and awhile, and shoot the shit with their fans, answer questions about their game, and take good-natured suggestions, and have a good attitude about occasional rude and trolling comments.
I disagree with this point. Nearly all the games I support have been around 6 months or longer before I had a chance to play them and become a fan of the game, and decide to support them on Patreon. Every update that shows up here, is more likely to find new users like me. I only look at games that show up on the Latest Updates screen. A game could be amazing, but if is never updated, I will never find out about it. Sure, when I started out here a year or so ago, I read a lot of recommendation threads, and sorted by rating, but now I've tried or at least looked at all the highly rated completed games (I think), so now I just browse the Latest Updates screen regularly to see what is new and what has been updated that I haven't played yet that looks promising.
