It's been a while how many months has it been, many I think.
When was the last update, 2023?
- Thread starter monroe
- Start date
When was the last update, 2023?
- Jul 3, 2021
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Look at the date of the last update, then do some simple math. If you are capable.
- May 9, 2019
- 4,915
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- Apr 11, 2023
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- Apr 26, 2020
- 15,450
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Not trolling but not really sure at this point but it's not the first time Nef does this.
- Feb 20, 2021
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This is one of my all-time favorite AVNs. Will break my perverted heart if it is really dead. 
- Apr 13, 2020
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- Apr 13, 2020
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Any hard evidence to back it? Have you spoken to any of this 80% of so-called milking devs? How do you know things don't just happen in their lives where they just have to bail or disappear due to legal reasons or they died or in a hospital and cannot disable their Patreon, etc? Things aren't always black and white.
Let me be more clear... until you can prove anything, you know nothing of what you're talking about, so stop pretending like you do.
- Feb 27, 2018
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I understand that any number of things can happen in a dev's life that would delay a game for long periods of time, especially solo devs and extremely small teams which is the vast majority of games on sites like this. Not every game that hasn't been updated in a year+ is abandoned.
Unfortunately the same limitations that cause delays are also the reasons why more often these games go unfinished and abandoned than completed. The abandoned tag is a necessary evil to inform users of such games. Outside of the easy ones where the dev announces the abandonment of a particular title we have to draw a line at some point because while it's entirely possible that a dev goes radio silent for a couple years then suddenly drops a 2gb update we all know the likelihood of that happening is slim and it only goes down as time goes on.
While some people might take the abandoned tag as a more final status than what it actually is, it's still a useful and necessary distinction.
- Jul 23, 2018
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Devs being consistent, until they are not, before the game gets tagged with "on hold" followed by "abandoned" halfway through the content, with overpromising and underdelivering, is a common pattern some people just refuse to see. Games getting updates regularly until completion is far more uncommon. I tossed games onto my watch list and it became a graveyard with page after page of abandoned titles with some of them occasionally receiving a nothingburger update to keep the hope of fans alive, with the same drama unfolding in every thread.
Yeah I just don't buy it. It may be true for this dev (though I doubt it considering past signs) but it's far too common and consistent across the board, and die-hard fans who argue it's totes realsies this time are always present making it a difficult sell.
- Dec 1, 2019
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I don't know the statistics, so I wouldn't say it is more common for games to be abandoned than to get to completion, but yeah, that would not surprise me in the least.
Most devs (again: I think, I have no hard data) would be fans of the genre instead of full blown professionals. Arguably more likely to be young and enthusiastic than old and refined. Possibly never had any type of long term project going before. This is not to be insulting as if this was a bad thing, but life changes, and with it does everything hobby/side project wise.
There is a certain fluctuation of interest, which can always happen. I have had hobbies in my life which I still consider great hobbies but just do not find the time for it as much as I did "back then". So I was an avid geocacher a dozen or so years ago, doing dozens on some days, thousands over the years, attending meetings and events and suchlike. These days I still enjoy it, but if I come around to going hunting with a couple of my friends more than once or twice a year, it's been a strong year.
Also real life happens. If you go on a long term project in your early twenties, you may suddenly have finished studying and are going to a 9 to 5 schedule, possibly already sitting in front of a computer all day and wanting something different. Or a certain other comes along, you want to spend time together, suddenly there are children and all kind of responsibilities.
And even long term projects itself can drag on and motivation can be shrinking. It's one thing if you get paid for it because that is your job (I have been working on a project on my current job since I started it in 2016 which back then was supposed to come to an end as such in 2018 ... still goes on, but I get my monthly paycheck, so I will continue doing my part, because I like living in a flat and eating daily instead of being homeless and starving), but a completely different beast if you do it "just like that" when the inevitable slumps happen.
What does all of this mean for Midlife Crisis? I don't know. I have no idea of Nef's work experience nor his personal life. Some stuff has come up on here before, but I will always take self descriptions with a grain of salt (and that grain will weigh 100 pounds). He has been through similar experiences before and recovered, but as others have said, there are some negative signs (like admitting to writer's block) and one more problem may always be the proverbial straw to break the camel's back. And it doesn't have to be a serious problem.
So - for myself - I will indeed consider this abandoned as of now. Which is always the risk when following a work in progress. It would be a shame since it has some of the best scenes I know and a ton of characters I wished to explore more. Then again, I will be thankful for the experience because it has some of the best scenes I know and a ton of characters I really like. Just like a couple of others.
I think this is a lot depending on mindset. When you're following a game (or any other endeavour really) in development instead of waiting until it is finished, the risk is always included for free. And the uncertainty that tags along. You gotta accept that from the get go. Then you don't need to whine when stuff happens you don't like, nor do you need to cope.
I would even argue it's more likely. Ignoring the the reasons and motivations for why creators abandon their work and whether it's premeditated or opportunistic, there used to be three basic types of abandonment:
1. Delivers consistently until he doesn't. Just disappears forever. Might log into patreon to collect the money. People see through it immediately and start leaving.
2. Delivers randomly, sometimes every month on day 1, sometimes delayed by half a year. Then disappears. Harder to see through, because people can't tell if this is just a longer break or if it's permanent. Some patrons will justify even longer breaks and will continue paying.
3. Delivers more or less consistently, then delays start happening, but the dev makes excuses and so on.
If MLC is actually abandoned, Nef could have just invented the fourth basic type:
4. Is consistently inconsistent. Makes tons of excuses, but the game is eventually updated. Could disappear for months on end, but an update is eventually released. Until it isn't. People can't tell if it's for real this time, or if it's another delay.
I'm not going to guess Nef's motivations, but again, I saw a few patterns.
A lot of creators start their games as a work of love, but the project grows out of proportion and is too much for one person to handle. Delays start happening naturally because it's getting much harder to add the same amount of content to the game with the same effort.
Some devs grow weary. They started off strong and it's easy to see why. Imagine if you start with 1% and then add 3% of the total content every month. It's easy to see it's going to take 33 months to complete the game. If you're perfectly consistent, the first update grows the game four times, the second update grows it by just 75%, the third one is just 43%, the fourth one is just 30% and so on. The tenth update is below 11% more content. The twentieth update is just above 5% added content. It's easy to feel a sense of underachievement.
Sometimes life happens and you just can't make time to work on the game, and you promise yourself you'll get back to it. But you never do and you can't look patrons in their eyes and tell them that you can't work on the game anymore.
And sometimes it's just because of money. Money happens and popular games make absolutely life-changing amounts of money for one person. I can imagine that once you pay all your debts and just don't need the money anymore, it's just for pleasure and you get lazy because, hey, if people are actually paying me, that means I deserve this money, right?
And let's face it, some devs are just in it for the money. I've seen it some 6-10 years ago with blatant cash grabs, minimum effort games that released between one and three updates and if they didn't catch on, the dev just dropped it. It was pretty clear with some developers because they reused the same models, same sets and same rendering settings in different games, hoping one of them will catch on and they can milk it.
- May 29, 2017
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ngl, this genre of entertainment is dying. I'll go back to literotica at this point.
- Aug 3, 2020
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It's not much better there.
Right? Haremlit authors on Amazon, like 95% are just cookie cutter copies. And since they're indie authors, it's always a crap shoot whether the writing is any good, especially when it comes to grammar, etc.
- Mar 23, 2018
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This game worked for me several times over the years! Love it, Hate it, and enjoyed it. I hope Nef comes back some day but ... you never know.
- Sep 6, 2017
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- Apr 26, 2020
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- Jul 17, 2021
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Not true. I still believe the mod jumped the gun on this one. But I've been wrong before.