you can be as skeptical as you want, but this is right from Slow Burn last month:
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My sincere thanks to everyone who honoured their commitment not to leak this month's episode to pirate sites. It took a whopping 12 days for the episode to leak which is by far a record!
What was the effect?:
In the first 7 days we had 10% more Patrons that we normally get in the whole month. This was also a new record!
After 12 days we had 17% more Patrons than we normally get in a whole month.
It's hard to say how many Patrons we would have if the episode was never leaked but I think it isn't unreasonable to suggest that leaking costs this game around 25% of its support. For a small developer this is huge.
As I've said many times, I release a public version in due course so leaking the early release only achieves one thing- it undermines the Patreon support model. Without that I, and many other developers, would not be developing.
My thanks again- it's nice to know that a sense of honour and fair play still exist for so many people. Working on the next episode with renewed vigour!