It has stopped his game from being leaked early so it has done its job no matter what you think of the prices.
Also if you joined at say Wanda's Summer Invitation($27.50) your payment will stay the same unless you leave or change tier.
The two tiers above this are.
BETA TESTER + WANDA'S LOVE
$54.50
/ month (plus VAT)
BACKSTAGE PASS
$81.50
/ month (plus VAT
Which has done more damage? Charging more than games like Helldivers costs each month or the utter lack of sexual content? As much discussion as takes place around this game, you'd expect him to have at least 1000 patrons on Patreon. He's got less than a third of that. Games like Summer's Gone have significantly less sexual content, yet Ocean has has far more patrons. So, it goes to figure that the reason his game is struggling isn't bc of "pirates,' which is the only reason his game is as successful as it is btw. It's what he thinks he can charge.
Anyone remember Bryci? She was a one off porn star turned web girl. Her husband got her to do the same sort of thing with her adult business. She thought she could get away charging premium prices and doing tease content and people flat told her that wasn't going to work. By the end of her career, she was charging less than web girls that had retired years earlier who were also providing no new content and Bryci had to start doing full on hardcore, which was another line they claimed they would never cross.
Under Armour tries the same thing... well over 90% of their product sales only happen during extreme sales, when they're discounted to what you'd typically pay for generic brands. It's also why they're almost always on sale.
This model sort of works, but the return quickly diminishes. You don't get to say my product is a premium product - the consumer does. The number and quality of brand new games that you can get for less today is astounding. Other games have achieved as much holding content back at the $5-10 dollar tiers. It REALLY sounds like you're just trying to justify you own bad decision bc, in all reality, you could support several VN's for what it's costing people to support and get the content for this one. Drifty is a dev whose work I'd actually put real value on, but I still wouldn't pay that much. That's more than the Tell Tale game cost. And I have no issue paying smaller amounts for longer bc these are solo devs or very small teams, but how many different subs like Game Pass, EA's subscription service, Nvidia's, etc could you get for what he's asking? Like 3. This game is not worth that. It NEVER will be. So all he's doing is undermining his own attempts to make this a financially successful endeavor, bc that's clearly all this is to him.