Patreon Is Hardening Their 'Adult Content' Guidelines. Discussion Thread

[DSSAlex]

The issue is that there aren't a lot of alternatives that do what Patreon does. If you look at the thread on Patreon alternatives around here you'll see a few weird Japanese/Korean sites (not ideal for western creators), sites that look like a scam, or a website put up as a tipjar for anime Nazis. And now Kickstarter's Patreon clone that isn't quite open yet. The ecosystem is still very much centered around Patreon because you know you can trust Patreon with your credit card info.

The direction I see things going is that a few of the big games will set up their own sites. One of the most useful tools for creators are email lists. I see MrDots or DarkSilver building up big fan bases. They'll lose a big chunk when the hammer eventually falls on Patreon because not all of their donors will trust the new website they set up, but they'll be able to survive.

The problem with this approach is that, well, these games are a form of sex work. Sex work attracts crazies and there will be no end of weirdos trying to hack these sites. To even attempt to run a site for adult games you're going to need security far in excess of what a regular ecommerce site would need.

Smaller devs are probably screwed, barring an adult Patreon clone that you feel comfortable looking at without ad block. The race is on.

 

[anne O'nymous]

A new AAA title is sold for $60 while an adult game on Patreon developed for roughly the same amount of time (a couple of years, as dragging it out as much as possible is a good way to milk the patrons who want the niche product) will cost around twice as much after pledging a mere $5 a month. All while obviously lacking the quality, content and replayability of a lot of AAA title.

Your comparison is weak for three reasons :
1) A new AAA game sold at least a million copies. A creator on Patreon rarely achieve a thousand patreons.
2) The guys making an AAA game are payed, and generally well payed, during the (on average) two years they works on the game. A creator on Patreon rely on the sole pledges and (s)he's S.O. job to live, and/or to pay the guys helping him to make the game.
3) When you start giving pledges to a creator on Patreon, you already know that he make an indie game, you already know the quality of his game and you also know that it will take time and cost you more than an average AAA game. You do it on purpose without any pressure forcing you to do so.

You said that you were following adult games since ten years. Alright. And you didn't notice the big change in quality between the 5 minutes mini-games in flash we had ten years ago, and games like anyone of the "biggest" here ? Even the average actual Ren'py or RPGmaker games are better than almost all what we had as western indie games just five years ago.
Do you really think that a game like "Dating My Daughter" don't have a cost, whatever in time or in money, and that this cost is way higher than the average sharks-lagoon game or the adult games on newgrounds ? Obviously, some creators can live with just the tips they receive. But they are here since years, well established and most of them have already a ton of games to help them receive these tips.

So, sorry but I completely disagree with you. Personally I prefer the worst Ren'py game available here to all the shitty flash games I played five years ago. And if it mean that some guys will abuse of Patreon and get money for even worse games... well, what to say ? I don't care, it's not my money !

 

[gamersglory]

I am currently looking at opening a Patreon alternative. The upside is I will allow Taboo subjects as long as there "Fictional" in nature and characters are all 18+. Working out the logistics and other things like payment processors and hosting. Downside won't be ready until at least February. But I do have a solution in the works

 

[muttdoggy]

Personally, I don't care about incest at all. It can be gone and I'll still play the game. I play for the experience, the art, and the scenes. Incest is optional. They can figure out a way to mod it so it can have incest content if you desire. I'd rather the developers and Patreon iron their differences out and get back to producing content and doing their own thing.
Honestly, I'm surprised at and amused by the reaction. People are bringing out pitchforks and torches because they want their incest content? And they're willing to burn down the town to get the incest itch scratched? You know, if you torch the town, there's no-one left to produce incest content. Keep that in mind.

 

[riexor]

Personally, I don't care about incest at all. ... Keep that in mind.

More or less how I feel. The fact of the matter is all the best games feature that content. Is there even one game in the popular section that doesn't?

I think for many the appeal of incest is just the taboo nature. I like it and I an only child and, while I love them to death, all of my female family members look like a cross between a pug, an eggplant and TV's Blossom.

Anyway, it's just pixels.

 

[gamersglory]

Seams that Incest is big with people that were the only child. Anyway, Incest seems to be the easiest storytelling mechanism. As I have said before though Incest Storytelling in Fiction is not illegal. But Patreon seems to have a problem with it. Most likely Investors or Real or fake Bible-thumpers like Roy Moore. but alas trying to reason with them you would get better results banging your head against a brick wall. It's a violation of the 1st amendment of the US constitution. At least I'm trying to do something about it. FYI if you people want your games without having to be PC there's a link to my Patreon below. It won't be a cheap endeavor but it will be worth it.

 

[Ryel]

@Dasati I know Patreon only takes 5% as I mentioned that. But it still takes a cut while now betraying their word of not interfering with the work of creators and also not protecting the patrons themselves at all. I'm not questioning if the 5% is too much or they could ask more or anything like that. I'm saying that as a business they no longer provide the quality and service they promised.

Also, an interesting thing about PayPal and Patreon (which I merely used as an example, not the sole solution). Just last year PayPal was pressuring Patreon into dropping all adult content because they themselves did not want to allow payment for such things. Patreon supposedly stood up for adult content creators and in the end PayPal gave in. PayPal remained a payment method for content flagged as NSFW on Patreon.
Meanwhile PayPal itself has a a kind of vague Legal Agreement about what is acceptable and what not. Kind of like Patreon does now.
If you google "paypal adult content" you should get to a Help Center page of PayPal titled
"What is PayPal’s policy on transactions that involve sexually oriented goods and services?" (sorry, can't use links).
Physical goods are okay, digital goods are not... doesn't make much sense if we think about fairness. But they also consider "The literary, artistic, political, or scientific value of the product." meaning they can always make up a reason for why something is banned and why something is okay.
To add to the craziness (or hypocrisy) PayPal is very often used for all the staff they do not allow through Epoch. Epoch acts as a middle-man. On a lot of adult websites you can pick Epoch as your payment method, in turn Epoch allows you to use PayPal as your payment method and voila, you are paying for adult content with your PayPal and no one baths an eye. PayPal wash their hands because you totally didn't use PayPal to pay for banned adult content, you paid for Epoch!
But to go back to the first part here. I find it very interesting that Patreon a year ago stood up and sided with adult content creators while risking the loss of a lot of money in case PayPal decided they rather let go Patreon than change their policy. And now Patreon themselves decided to try and get rid off adult stuff. I wonder what caused the change.

@anne O'nymous My comparison is not weak. You just missed the point by taking it out of context.
My whole point was to point out that a lot of devs exploit the Patreon system and the psychology of people. A lot of devs are in the adult content + Patreon business because they want easy money. A lot of them are making thousands of dollars a month, their patrons are literally paying for all their bills. They make more money than a lot of people with an 8 hours a day "regular" job. The difference is these devs do not have to answer to anyone if they miss out on actual work. A lot of them do not even treat it as actual work exactly because they are in for the easy money. They can ignore any kind of schedule because their promises are not enforced by the third party that is Patreon. If you have an office job and you don't go in for a few days, you will be most likely fired. If a Patreon creator does nothing for a few days, weeks or months nothing happens. Most of the patrons are on the principle that what is 5 or 10 USD a month? Nothing. Easy change, pocket money. So they keep paying because they are also starved for the kind of content the slacker devs provide (when they actually work). As I said the lack of mainstream support makes these games a niche product that can be easily overpriced because the reach of internet ensures you will find people willing to pay.
Adult games are in all kind of ethical and financial grey areas and currently this is being exploited. As the whole topic is about Patreon I wanted to point out how Patreon itself is part of this exploit problem. The patrons (customers) are not protected.
Why did I bring up AAA titles? Because I'm talking about exploited customers. You see, if you buy an AAA title all kind of laws will bind both you and the developer of the product. If they lie to you about the content you can sue them as false advertisement is against the law. If you pre-order (don't do that people) a game and they drop development, you have the right, by law, to demand a refund and you shall get your money back. For that 60 bucks you also get protection.
Patreon does not offer that. You will pay 60 or likely even more USD over the years for a continuously unfinished product under the pretense that it is done via some legal official platform (Patreon) but in reality nothing stops the creator to drop development or change the entire content and direction of the product.The patrons in good will supported the dev because they were promised things. Because they thought "This game is good, I want to see it become great. I will support you with 5 bucks a month, that is not much for me but with all these other patrons we can help to make it become reality!". And then the dev turns out to be a scum who drops development at version 0.4 (mere example), goes into hiding for a couple of months while s/he sets up a new internet persona and does it again. Or Patreon butts in like it does now and forces diligent devs to change the content of their product, forcing the unfortunate devs to unwillingly betray their patrons.
Just because people willingly parted with their money doesn't mean it is ethical, fair or should be allowed for a system to even exists that supports exploiting customers. The system also shouldn't be allowed to force creators to change their content or go bankrupt if they decide to side with their vision and creative freedom.

As for following adult games, the quality did not get better in the past 10-15 years. The variety did.
In the past quality adult games meant something eastern, basically japanese, because the west barely had any. It is possible you don't like japanese adult games but that won't mean they were not well made as a lot of them are quality product.
In the past few years the "west" started making a lot of adult fictional content (i.e. not only live porn) so we have far greater variety. But the overral quality not changed at all. Most of the games just as before are low-effort clones of each other. Just look at this site, it is filled incest games that follow the exact same story and lot of them even uses the exact same models. Yes, a handful of them has really high quality 3D renders or 2D drawings and some even have decent writing but these are the exceptions. So no, the overral quality did not change. Which is to be expected as, just like I said it many times by now, a lot of the devs are in for the easy money not because they want to create something exceptional thinking "We can't allow the west to lose in quality!".

 

[Jim Webb]

Seams that Incest is big with people that were the only child. Anyway, Incest seems to be the easiest storytelling mechanism. As I have said before though Incest Storytelling in Fiction is not illegal. But Patreon seems to have a problem with it. Most likely Investors or Real or fake Bible-thumpers like Roy Moore. but alas trying to reason with them you would get better results banging your head against a brick wall. It's a violation of the 1st amendment of the US constitution. At least I'm trying to do something about it. FYI if you people want your games without having to be PC there's a link to my Patreon below. It won't be a cheap endeavor but it will be worth it.

I like your idea but I'm not giving my money to patreon, also you think Patreon are run by or listen to Bible Thumpers? Lots of them based down in San Francisco are there.

 

[anne O'nymous]

Seams that Incest is big with people that were the only child. Anyway, Incest seems to be the easiest storytelling mechanism. [...]

Because it is easier. You're the twentish son, she's your mother, and her, here, it's you eighteen years sister... All of you know the other since so many years, all of you trust the other. No need to create a background for each character. No need to raise suspicion in the character's mind. No need to write an encounter scene. No need to even have a plot.
You're twentish, have no girlfriend and there's these two girls living under the same roof than you... Go for it man, you've a great story line here :/

@anne O'nymous My comparison is not weak. You just missed the point by taking it out of context.
My whole point was to point out that a lot of devs exploit the Patreon system and the psychology of people. A lot of devs are in the adult content + Patreon business because they want easy money. A lot of them are making thousands of dollars a month, their patrons are literally paying for all their bills. They make more money than a lot of people with an 8 hours a day "regular" job.

I don't take it out of context, I put it in its real context.

Yes, there's creators on patreon who make a lot of money. DarkCookie, first adult creator in number of patreons, make almost $20 000 by month. It's a big amount of money, oh my god... Well, when you understand that this money is divided between the eight people working on the project, it become $2 500 only. Don't know for the US or your country, but where I live it's the average start salary for this kind of works. And like legally speaking it's not a salary but the benefit from a micro-society, in most western countries they'll have to pay more taxes on this that they would have done for just a salary. So, in the end, the creator who've the most patreons earn less by creating his game that he could earn doing the same exact job for any software society.
The second adult game creator is Fenoxo. He earn more money, $32 000, but he have more cost since he don't just make games, he also provide support for a full community. After this came MrDots (Dating my Daughter), The SimBro team (SimBro), TeamNimbus (CloudMeadow), Elena Champion of Lust, Fek (Rack2), DarkSilver (Big Brother). In this list, only three (perhaps) live well with the help of patreon ; anyone following the adult game scene know who they are since it's obvious. All the other in this list earn, individually, less than $2 000/month. And it's the same for every single creator after this list, almost all of them earn less than $2 000/month ; which is less than a 8 hours regular job in their country. 75% of the creators on Patreon earn less than the living wages in their country.

Now is it an abuse ? Well, for someone who don't understand, perhaps. I mean, that's right, their patreons help them to pay their bills, when they don't integrally pay them ... But that's why they make a Patreon account ; to help them pay the bills since creating an adult game nowadays is a full time job ! You don't pledge to pay their bill, you pledge because they deserve a salary and have made the choice to rely on patreons while making a game, rather than having a full time job and not making a game.

So, sorry again. Yes, there's people who want to abuse of patreon, but there's almost not a single one who achieved this. In fact, among all the creators who have at least one game here, only 4 of them can be seen as making more than he deserve. Personally I would go for 5, but the last one have a strong fan base behind him, so apparently he do a good enough job.

The difference is these devs do not have to answer to anyone if they miss out on actual work.

They have to answer to their patreons... After this, if their patreons are stupid enough to continue giving them pledges while they have nothing in return... once again what can I say except that I don't care, it's their money not mine.
There's creators who make "bad" games and still earn some money with the help of Patreon. The worst example which cross my mind earn $3 431/month with a game which have too many bugs. But in the same time the story isn't bad, the idea is original and creative, the drawing and animations are more than decent and in the end he correct most of the bugs. Any other one who make bad quality games don't even achieve $500/month.
There's also creators who don't really care, are always behind their dead lines, and/or rush their games. One of them earn a decent amount of money and probably shouldn't earn this much. But who I am to judge ? I think he abuse of his patreons, but apparently it's not what the said patreons think, so who am I to judge them ?

Why did I bring up AAA titles? Because I'm talking about exploited customers. You see, if you buy an AAA title all kind of laws will bind both you and the developer of the product. If they lie to you about the content you can sue them as false advertisement is against the law.

Are you really this naive ? You know what societies which create AAA games also have ? A legal department full of 5 digits/month lawyers. Try to sue them and you'll quickly discover that you don't know the Law.
False advertisement ? Sorry, but it was a demo, not an advertisement, and they never said that the actual game will look like this. Even in their real advertisement they don't show the game and explicitly say it. It's not their fault if your expectations goes further than what they planed to do.
Failure to refund if they don't achieve the game you've pre-ordered ? Read better the next time you check the, "I have read this", in case they explicitly said that there were no guaranties.

But it's funny to read you say that they can't exploit customers at the exact time where EA receive tons on shit on its face because of their never before this clear abuse with star wars battlefront 2.

Because they thought "This game is good, I want to see it become great. I will support you with 5 bucks a month, that is not much for me but with all these other patrons we can help to make it become reality!".

And so what ? It's not your money ! Let's people live and do what they want with their money. Don't come here, or anywhere else, starting to preach your own moral and fighting everyone who don't agree. Especially don't do it in a thread which exist specifically because Jack Conte started to do the exact same thing.
The more I read your comments, the more I want to respond you by a simple, "we don't need your hate nor your whining". But well, I'm not you, so I tried another time to explain you where you failed.

As for following adult games, the quality did not get better in the past 10-15 years.

Seriously ? You'll have to give some examples if you want that someone believe you on this.
Even on the professional asian scene it would be hard to find some that have more than 10 years. But well, it doesn't mean that I don't miss the real old ones. Where are my Mad Paradox, Maid Story and other Cobra ?

 

[kzk0987]

I also don't particularly care about incest, I'm good either way, but Patreon is also going after Mind Control and Corruption themes, which are my main fix.
Also regardless of my opinion of incest, or of any other fetish, I'm still against a platform that censors and tells people what fictional drawn (or 3D modeled) porn they are allowed to jerk off to. To me that is just insanity.

 

[Ryel]

By the way, instead of a patreon system wouldn't a kickstarter-ish system work for the creators?
They could raise money for their projects while the rules hold them accountable so the donors are not unprotected either. While Kickstarter itself officially does not allow adult content, Kimochi Red Light (the kickstarter of adult games) is entirely about that. It also doesn't take any %, all donations go to the devs. Coudn't creators use that?

Also an interesting tidbit of news: Kickstarter is about to launch Drip, their own version of Patreon. So they will not only have a fundraising system but also a subscription system. I wonder if the direct competition and real possibility of losing money might make Patreon reevaluate their policy on adult content. If Drip does not allow adult content but Patreon does, that could give them an edge.

 

[Delmach]

I also don't particularly care about incest, I'm good either way, but Patreon is also going after Mind Control and Corruption themes, which are my main fix.
Also regardless of my opinion of incest, or of any other fetish, I'm still against a platform that censors and tells people what fictional drawn (or 3D modeled) porn they are allowed to jerk off to. To me that is just insanity.

Thats the kind of mindset I like, got to preserve the freedom to create content, you can also never be sure when they go after "your weird fetish".

Regarding the Mind Control and Corruption, yeah they also dont want that, and I've seen creators cave in to that already. Or new creators being blocked from posting their games containing incest. (If I read that right at least.)

"We also do not allow other fringe sexual fetish content, such as incest, necrophilia, or fetish content that is hard to distinguish from non-consensual sex."

The bold part is pretty problematic I say, because be it Hypnosis, Mind Control, Corruption, Blackmail, Coercion, Drug use, probably even Alcohol would fall under it, of course it again depends on who would review it.

And I do know a few games that have a lot of their so called "fringe sexual fetish content", those games stand absolutely no chance if it comes to a real review.

I do get people being worried and prematurely changing their content, and its probably better than losing creators altogether but it also shows that there needs to be an alternative to Patreon. I wouldn't only want vanilla ice cream forever.

 

[smnb]

By the way, instead of a patreon system wouldn't a kickstarter-ish system work for the creators?
They could raise money for their projects while the rules hold them accountable so the donors are not unprotected either.

I doubt that enough creators have clear enough vision of what the final product should be, how long it will take to make, etc., to be able to work with kickstarter-ish system. Plus I don't think it's what this is about. I'm not buying the product, Patreon is more like a tip jar to me. I like what I see (and typically got somewhere else, like this forum), so I send some money as "thanks" and hope that if enough people do the same, it will motivate creator to make more. I don't need any protection, because there's no way I can get cheated. Sure, some tiers may be a little expensive, especially when it all adds up over the time. But the better reward is usually early access or some bonus. And being in this forum, I don't think I have to explain why it's not really a problem, assuming you can wait at least few hours.

 

[Ryel]

@smnb It does seem most creators go with the flow while making their game without a vision how the game should actually finish so that is indeed a problem with a fundraising system. And I get the tip jar part, I didn't bring this up to focus on the financies and customer protection, I just added that as bonus I personally would appreciate.
What I wanted to focus on is the very existance of Kimochi Red Light as that is the only currently active site that not only supports adult content as a fundraiser but that is the sole focus of it, to my knowledge. If Patreon really goes down on the zero adult content allowed path, creators will need alternatives. I just hoped to bring the attention to this site as a possible alternative. Of course the ideal solution would be if either Patreon allowed all kind of adult content or as the similar thread titled "Adult Patreon" discusses it, a new site for that would be created.

 

[mikeblack]

DarkCookie, first adult creator in number of patreons, make almost $20 000 by month. It's a big amount of money, oh my god... Well, when you understand that this money is divided between the eight people working on the project, it become $2 500 only.

I'm pretty sure most of DarkCookies team members don't work full time which means they don't require a full piece of the cake. There is no reason a "HR & Cookie Baker" needs to work full time on such a small project. Same for the "Server side & Website" guy or the two coder and so on. DarkCookie will probably take the biggest chunk and for most of the rest it will likely be just a side job.

 

[anne O'nymous]

I'm pretty sure most of DarkCookies team members don't work full time which means they don't require a full piece of the cake.

My intent wasn't to say what they exactly earn, but to point the fact that the number above, "per month", need to be weighted. Too many people still think that each creator work alone and take all the money, which is far to be right.

 

[lynx33]

It sounds funny but its not at all uncommon. Indie devs of all medias have been "leaking" there own content for decades now.

Yup. My band leaks our music all the damn time. Sure, if you wanna buy it or listen on Spotify and Apple Music, that's fantastic, but we want it to be heard and to get attention, so we make sure anyone who could possibly be interested in it has a way to easily listen to it.

 

[TheCrimsonRevenger]

Patreon started going all gestapo on us a while back when they banned Lauren Southern. Like her or hate her, their ban of her was total bull. That was the moment you knew they were going the route of youtube.

I saw someone comment that the FCC is forcing patreon to start these censorship rules. Anyone know(and can point to credible reports) if that's true?

 

[wep]

Bad news. patreon asked to change the CONTENT of Dream of Desire. The dev has a week to complain.
Here the complete message from Sin.

You must be registered to see the links

it is the end of most of the project on patreon IMHO.

 

[Bloo]

Lewdlabs (

You must be registered to see the links

) Patreon Post.

Most of you probably know about Patreon getting stricter about their community guidelines. This resulted in a temporary suspension of my Patreon page last month. They asked me to remove various words/keywords regarding incest.

I thought everything was fine, but I received another message from Patreon. They said my game is not in line with the community guidelines because of its incest content.
They said I need to change some parts of the game. I'm among the first creators to get a message like this from Patreon, but certainly not the last.

Now I didn't want to just leave it at that. I thought I could try to reason with them or somehow avoid this situation. I told them my game is fiction, it's not real. They said it doesn't matter.
I brought up Game of Thrones, since that has incest and it's on TV and is not banned on Patreon either.
They said the problem is the fetishization of incest. So that instantly kills this discussion about adult games. (step relations are out of the question too)

So this forces me to either change some of the game or stop production entirely.
The deadline is the last day of November.

So in order to be able to continue working on Dreams of Desire, and be able to finish what I have started with it, I'm changing a few things about the game.

The list of changes are the following:

• Adding an intro scene, where it is explained that the characters are not related.
• Changing the dialogue lines where the characters call each other by their family names, or say things that might imply this.

And that's it.

The visual content of the game won't change and I won't cut any scenes either.

However, giving such a short amount of time to change this is... well. Let's just say I don't really find it fair, especially when it's release time.
That means, and I REALLY hate to do this again, I have to delay the game a few days.
However, it will be out this month, no matter what. This means I probably won't sleep too much for the rest of the month, but there will be a release. The 29th evening, but 30th morning at the latest (EU time), for both the Elite and the General release.
Now this hits the Elite tier the hardest again, and I'm terribly sorry for that. I promise you guys, I will make it up to you.

Now I understand some of you might be angry/upset about this. Believe me, it saddens me more than anyone. However, there are plans in the pipeline that will help the situation. That's all I can say for now.

I don't want to lash out against Patreon, or hate on them. Afterall, this platform helped Dreams of Desire tremendously in the past months, and even though there are mistakes and inconsistencies in their actions regarding this topic, I'm sure they are trying their best.

All I can do is to try my best as well. If I somehow finish earlier than the 29th, I'll of course release the game as soon as possible.

I hope this post helped understand the things that are happening and why they are happening.