Nah, he just got used to living on $10k a month income in 2020-2021, but unfortunately, that same $10k in 2024 buys a hell of a lot less of just about everything.
Hm, could be the case. Don't know how hard inflation hit other countries because of corona.
My country had it a bit worse, because probably our "friendos", bombed our critical energy infrastructure which hit quiet hard inflation wise, because someone in our govenment, before all that, thought nuclear energy bad, replace with gas power plants...
So i can't really compare.
tbh I wonder what his total income is when you factor in the annual pass stuff and merch
i guess it always feels weird to see ppl asking for money but the dev is in a sort of position where unless he does exactly that, he'll just end up slowly losing money (if not due to subscriber loss, then due to inflation - this dude does not get any annual raises or refreshers)
also wonder how many subscribers he could have obtained if he:
1) didn't piss off f95
2) didn't rework the intro sequence to be so damn off-putting: the Ami scene is just way too in-your-face imo. from what I remember of playing the original, it was a mystery that slowly builds up to that
3) listened to community feedback about ppl disliking the gameplay and puzzles: i think he views them as essential for immersion or something? either way, it seems like there's a near-unanimous consensus on them being shit
4) increased the quality of sexual content instead of dropping animations - for instance, he could integrate animations in the game itself instead of only having them in the repeatable events. i think the majority of ppl that find this game organically are looking for porn so it makes sense to cater to that
5) capped the word count to like 30-40k per update (~1.5-2 hours of content) and focused on making it tighter/more focused
10k, if someone isn't satisfied with 10k (or above) there's some other problem involved, from my pov.
And he at least did invest in the stock market as far as i read, so my argument wasn't a total shot in the dark.
But hey, it's his personal business so he can invest in black jack and hookers for all i care... ah..., fuck blackjack...
About the reset puzzles and the likes.
If i'm right about his age, he might have been playing old J VN's/dating sims and having to do strange things like:
Be at the right place, at the right time, with x item to further a route or meet that missable special character, he kinda is right on track.
Though, we don't have that much of routes, more like little diversions, and no characters to miss.
But if what i said was his inspiration, he totally overdid it.
I think much has already been said about the lewd stuff ingame, so i don't think i could add some significant thing to it.
And yeah, the rework had me raise at least one eyebrow, or three.
Don't forget part of adding the care packages was so he could claim the game has ** by f95 standards and tried yelling it out loud so the mods had to remove the game from the site. It wasn't purely business benevolent. And of course when it didn't work he started getting bored of them, swapping to a system that only provides the reward if enough people pay for it (bonus animations per pledge stretch goal)
Can't really tell if Sel did the wizard stuff in the care packages (if it really has that stuff because i dunno) just to spite F95.
What i do know/remember is him "kinda" apologizing and explaining himself in an eye soring (color wise) post.
That was some really interesting post, because, while i might understand his mental state of "I don't give a fuck about anything", how smart of a world view is that?
I do hope that he isn't treating every aspect of his life this way, don't know how that guy is in private, but i do know that it will cost him extremely dearly if he hasn't/ won't come to a better conclusion.
Also, him abondining the ** (the initials intantionally?) was just a business choice.
He saw them getting leaked the moment they were released, so they had no benefit for him/his patrons.
