The small tragedy with Icstor is that despite all the hate he gets now this community does owe quite a bit to him. Western erotic games have been gaining a bit of traction in the last 2 years or so thanks in part to things like overall improvement in quality and platforms like Steam now fully allowing them to be hosted. There's a lot of newer members on this site and others who see Milfy City and kind of just assume it's part of the same crop as BaDIK, COBD, or ToN which I think is a testament to Icstor's level at the time because all his work predates those titles.
For a good while, Icstor was the cream of the crop in terms of visuals and scope. He still had a lot of the faults he gets criticized for now (aimless plots, overcrowding of characters, story losing traction due to rushed endings, etc.), but his ambition and attention to quality still set him up as the gold standard for a lot of devs and fans at the time. There were obviously others like Palmer, Akabur, Tora Productions, and Lesson of Passion who were starting to get more ambitious with their games, but I really think Icstor's work was what inspired a lot of people to try and make erotic games that weren't just clicker games for Flash.
From about 2015-2019, his work would only improve and eventually go on to influence creators in a number of ways. You can still see his influences of his early stuff (IS1 & Milf's Control) in a lot of the current RPGM games that are still around now like Peasant's Quest, Farmer's Dream, Lust Epidemic, and Anna Exciting Adventure. His Renpy games (IS2, Milf's Villa, & Milfy City) are still having some impact on games coming out now that choose to focus on large scopes with heightened visuals Apocalust for example looks like it's taking a few cues from his work.
What ended up leading to his now mixed-low reputation was a combination of two things in my opinion. The first and obvious was his work ethic suddenly taking a major dip. I don't think it was necessarily the delays that started the hate, if you go back in this thread you can see that he had gained himself enough good faith from the community that most were understanding at first. I'd argue it was the lack of communication that really drove people mad and after that came all of the wired decisions and missed promises he started making. The second was completely out of his control, and that was that a lot of newer devs started appearing that were matching and/or upping his standards. Whether it was the at the time up-and-coming devs like Philly Games, NLT, and DPC whose first games were maybe not as polished as Icstor's but they showed major promise, or some older devs who now had the resources to up their quality for their new games. Either way, what ended up happening was that around early 2019, right when Icstor started to become very shotty, the overall quality of the community started rising while he stayed in the same place.
Icstor sadly has been very absent from this sort of boom in Western Erotic Games, despite being one of the main people to get the ball rolling. He's still one of the better-known developers, but definitely not the most influential creator in the sub-genre anymore. This is now arguably the house Pinkcake built with many veteran and new devs looking to his work as the basis of inspiration. Even if his quality had stayed the same, Icstor could probably have been one of the creators leading this new wave but instead, he's been dealing with controversy after controversy over his current professionalism. Like many, I'm pretty cynical about what expect from him. But still, I hope he can get back to some sort of consistent level because I do think he can make good quality work and I appreciate the foundation he's laid out for this community.
