Patreon Alternatives?

Elle.effie

Newbie
Feb 21, 2018
28
22
I'm working on a game and was thinking of getting backing for it, but with Patreon blocking incest games, I need to find another option. I also read that Subscribestar is having problems too. Do you guys have any suggestions for this?
 

I'm Not Thea Lundgren!

AKA: TotesNotThea
Donor
Jun 21, 2017
6,604
19,025
Most devs with incest in their games rename the relationships to landlord/tenant, then release a patch that "fixes" it.
Your other option is to program it into the game so that you ask what the relationships are.
Picture Perfect is an example of this kind of thing in action.
 

Elle.effie

Newbie
Feb 21, 2018
28
22
I thought of that, but the problem is that three of the characters (not even the main ones) are siblings, them being related makes them work for the game. Being unrelated actually would change the game and the text drastically in their sections.
 

I'm Not Thea Lundgren!

AKA: TotesNotThea
Donor
Jun 21, 2017
6,604
19,025
I thought of that, but the problem is that three of the characters (not even the main ones) are siblings, them being related makes them work for the game. Being unrelated actually would change the game and the text drastically in their sections.
You only have to rename them to get it approved on Patreon. If the game makes more sense for them to be related, that's when you would use the patch.

Here is a post with an example -
 

DreamBig Games

Well-Known Member
Donor
Game Developer
May 27, 2017
1,014
1,000
Renaming the characters in a patch, but leaving the conversations with incest content will get you banned on patreon. All it takes is 1 screenshot attached to a report to patreon and that is it. The same goes for asking the player to pick/ insert relations of the characters. Just do a search on patreon rules here and you will find a couple of posts by devs who got banned/ suspended because of the same thing.
I am working on something that has incest, and the way I am doing it is to have the text in a .txt file, that can be easily edited by anyone. So, once I launch the game, I'm pretty sure in a couple of hours someone will MOD the game to contain incest content. In my Subscribe star version, there will be only accepted content.
 

DS23G

Member
Game Developer
Jul 24, 2019
145
397
I've seen some western adult animators that are now using pixiv fanbox, since it's apparently open to non-japanese now and even accepts paypal. The latter is kinda wild to me, since pixiv allows stuff that would never fly on patreon, like incest, loli, rape and guro. Wasn't patreon's purge of all things incest related to paypal's refusal to handle payments for "risky" adult content?
 

Adabelitoo

Well-Known Member
Jun 24, 2018
1,950
3,050
I've seen some western adult animators that are now using pixiv fanbox, since it's apparently open to non-japanese now and even accepts paypal. The latter is kinda wild to me, since pixiv allows stuff that would never fly on patreon, like incest, loli, rape and guro. Wasn't patreon's purge of all things incest related to paypal's refusal to handle payments for "risky" adult content?
Not sure how popular pixiv is but I guess they'll face the same destiny as Patreon eventually
 

DS23G

Member
Game Developer
Jul 24, 2019
145
397
Not sure how popular pixiv is but I guess they'll face the same destiny as Patreon eventually
It's probably the biggest site to upload art in Japan, certainly so for adult stuff. Fanbox is the crowdfunding service they started a couple years ago, which was originally only open to domestic users. There's no way they'll implement the same restricitions as Patreon, that'd cost them half their userbase. The only thing I can see them doing if paypal raises a stink would be going the dlsite way of splitting the service in adult and non-adult, with paypal only being available in the non-adult section.
 
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Mwanted

Well-Known Member
Oct 1, 2017
1,244
1,435
Then Idk what they are waiting for, likely 90% of the adult games on Patreon are censored/ruined without us even knowing, and incest is only the tip of the iceberg. If a valid alternative goes viral they'll take it all (and hopefully have Patreon die)
 

I'm Not Thea Lundgren!

AKA: TotesNotThea
Donor
Jun 21, 2017
6,604
19,025
Then Idk what they are waiting for, likely 90% of the adult games on Patreon are censored/ruined without us even knowing, and incest is only the tip of the iceberg. If a valid alternative goes viral they'll take it all (and hopefully have Patreon die)
Patreon won't die, the adult side is minute compared to its other stuff.
 

fidless

Engaged Member
Donor
Game Developer
Oct 22, 2018
2,624
4,622
There is none. That's a simple answer. People won't move to other platforms and just like with youtube/bitchube or twitter/mixer, you lose most of your patrons/subscribers.
Unless patreon starts baning porn content or other nonsense, nothing will change.
 

gunderson

Member
Aug 17, 2016
358
630
At this point Patreon is your best bet. Technically, there's a lot of content they forbid, but unless you put explicit references to that content on your Patreon page you can generally expect that the Patreon folks will never come looking for it.

It's never going to be a risk-free proposition, but best practices for making a risky game on Patreon are:

1) Avoid putting nudes anywhere on your Patreon page. That's the biggest, easiest red flag. It hurts your advertising side, granted, but nudes on your page are the most straightforward way to get your site reviewed/shut down.

2) Avoid any explicit references to content that Patreon's rules forbit. Generally speaking, calling your game 'adult' doesn't really bug anybody, but avoid referring to 'incest' or 'mother' or 'sister' or any other familial relationship. Devs usually get around this one by referring to characters by their first names instead regardless of their relationship to the main character.

3) Don't post risky content elsewhere accompanied by a link to your Patreon page. If I recall correctly, GiantNut fell afoul of this one. You can advertise, of course, but don't say "check out my incest game on Patreon!" or post stories about explicit incest with a link to your Patreon. That'll ruin your day.

4) Patches/player-chosen relationships. It's not a great solution, and it's not going to work as easily for all games, but if a patch just happens to release near when a build of your game is complete that changes the nature of character relationships and isn't explicitly released by you, that's not your problem and it doesn't tend to bother Patreon.

5) Don't needlessly annoy people online. There's always going to be some crazies out there who say dumb stuff and take things too far, but it only takes one to report your shit to Patreon for you to be in hot water, so be nice.

If you follow those rules, I think you'll find that Patreon is a pretty stable platform for adult game development. It's been fucking killing the taboo adult comic scene, though, since you can't easily patch different relationships into a set of still images (or at least nobody's bothered doing this).
 
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skipper_kowalski

New Member
Oct 18, 2019
6
12
Just make a patch hosted in sites friendly to your fetish. Like loli porn for instance that even a hardcore pirate site like F95 is allergic to.

There's this game jack-o-nine-tails that gots oodles of loli porn and graphic violence against lolis (read: cannibalism). Got itself a loli patch. Got approved for a patreon account. Go figure.