Don't think for one instant that if an alternative site with similar exposure and viewership existed, yet with a built in store/checkout process - any of these devs would be communicating here. That may sound crass, but this isn't an amicable two way relationship, it's forced. I agree with the other guy; it all smacks of hypocrisy - the large majority of users here aren't going to pay for these things, and all the forum etiquette in the world won't change the morals or the economics.
While these two comment responses may sound contradictory; it's the charade that I hate. Rip people off fine, but then don't have a 30 minute morality debate. Equivalently - play it straight, great, fund those devs; but then dont have the same debate on a forum whose primary existence is to proliferate these games free of cost.
You know, this is an argument I've already read on another topic - it was a discussion on this same forum about AI images, and someone said "why discussing about dataset ethics on a pirate forum?". However, this kind of argument is a little too black-and-white to me: saying "we're all pirates" is not too far from "men are all pigs", "women are all sluts" and the like. Pirating a game doesn't automatically mean you
must pirate them all. That's why I'd like to offer a different perspective.
I've found F95 while searching for adult games. But this is not the first site I found: I'll mention just another one, "FAP Nation", for comparison sake. They both provide with downloads for the same games, so if I were only interested in the download that's where I would stop, but there is a difference: the latter's comment section is an utter cesspool. On the flip side, F95's Pale Carnation's thread provides a lot of interesting discussion material and food for thoughts about the characters and the story, you just have to look for it - of course, there will always be posts on the level of "I slobber for feet", but that comes with the territory, and is part of the discussion anyways (high-brow as it is).
However, and here's the interesting part, on F95 the game's authors are also participating to the discussion, providing some insight on their choices, thought process and future intentions: this is something I'm personally grateful of, and something I won't find anywhere else. This rapport with the authors, and the discussions around the game, is something I'd like to see cultivated as much as possible: that's why, whenever a Pale Carnation release is imminent, I always advocate for waiting two weeks for the public release. The release will happen anyway, so I hope a modicum of courtesy can be applied. As you said, there is an big imbalance between the forum posters and the authors: avoiding to rub salt on their wounds is a way to thank the authors making the best of the situation, and being good sports about it on top of that. Is this hypocritical to all the other game authors we've ever hurt by downloading their games for free? It may as well be - but it's better than the alternative.
Oh, last
and least: I've supported multiple games I've discovered on this forum, whenever I could, with one-off donations. But that's just a "me" thing, and it's not part of the discussion.