I'm the last person that would be too judgemental about anyone pirating games, but at least own up to it and your own circumstances instead of trying to use made-up reasons to get around your unethical behavior.
- Patreon is a platform that supports both a charity model and a crowdfunding model, ORS is the later as evidenced by the entire system of rewards for pledging support, most of the rewards being the newer versions of her games. Also just because you don't have to sign a contract with the developer to plegde support, it does not mean you somehow don't have to answer to copyright law. Having no explicit "distribution rights" doesn't mean you get to do whatever you want, it means you don't have the rights to distribute it. Most devs know that it is not worth the effort and money to pursue legal action, specially when the results of such legal action wouldn't even be able to effectively shutdown pirate distribution, but that doesn't in anyway revoke their rights or makes the pirate distribution somehow lawful and incontestable.
- The Dev's own words were that she would now be a fulltime adult game developer, other people have relayed that and they could probably screencap the post where she says it, does she also need to post all her finances and let you audit her before she deserves to get money for her work? From an ethical standpoint there is no discussion anyway, even if EvaKiss was a multi-millionaire she'd still have the right to control the distribution and the pricing of her own artistic products. If you want to morally justify to yourself that she doesn't need the money, that's your business, but she has stated that she has no other forms of stable income, trying to deny that is acting in bad faith.
- The game not having built-in paywalls doesn't make it a free game, the price is in the actual lawful distribution. You can acquire the newer versions of the game for free through illicit means, but this doesn't mean the dev wouldn't prefer you actually paid for her product. The dev is not "asking to be pirated".
I reserve moral judgements because like I said earlier, you can have your own circumstances for pirating the game just like anyone else in this forum, but don't go blaming the distribution platform (you could probably reach out to EvaKiss personally on the game's discord for another way of compensating her if you have such an issue with Patreon) or victim-blaming the dev for something that is your decision.
- Patreon is a platform that supports both a charity model and a crowdfunding model, ORS is the later as evidenced by the entire system of rewards for pledging support, most of the rewards being the newer versions of her games. Also just because you don't have to sign a contract with the developer to plegde support, it does not mean you somehow don't have to answer to copyright law. Having no explicit "distribution rights" doesn't mean you get to do whatever you want, it means you don't have the rights to distribute it. Most devs know that it is not worth the effort and money to pursue legal action, specially when the results of such legal action wouldn't even be able to effectively shutdown pirate distribution, but that doesn't in anyway revoke their rights or makes the pirate distribution somehow lawful and incontestable.
- The Dev's own words were that she would now be a fulltime adult game developer, other people have relayed that and they could probably screencap the post where she says it, does she also need to post all her finances and let you audit her before she deserves to get money for her work? From an ethical standpoint there is no discussion anyway, even if EvaKiss was a multi-millionaire she'd still have the right to control the distribution and the pricing of her own artistic products. If you want to morally justify to yourself that she doesn't need the money, that's your business, but she has stated that she has no other forms of stable income, trying to deny that is acting in bad faith.
- The game not having built-in paywalls doesn't make it a free game, the price is in the actual lawful distribution. You can acquire the newer versions of the game for free through illicit means, but this doesn't mean the dev wouldn't prefer you actually paid for her product. The dev is not "asking to be pirated".
I reserve moral judgements because like I said earlier, you can have your own circumstances for pirating the game just like anyone else in this forum, but don't go blaming the distribution platform (you could probably reach out to EvaKiss personally on the game's discord for another way of compensating her if you have such an issue with Patreon) or victim-blaming the dev for something that is your decision.
