Patreon: Untenable model for game development?

[fotogaik]

First thing out of the way: I supported and still support some creators. I do it because I enjoy their art or story or both, but I don't usually have high expectations.

While looking at various games here, I noticed several patterns that keep repeating. I will describe a few for the purposes of this discussion.

1. A game in version 0.1 is released out of the blue. It has nice renders, shows some skin and makes promise of more content, but typically has a cookie cutter story based on currently popular tropes (a recent one would be incest). The developer gathers several patrons, rarely releases version 0.2, and then abandons the project.
   It's clear the creator was in it for the money. If enough patrons gathered, the game would continue, but usually not enough people are interested and the game becomes abandoned. This typically affects creators from less developed countries, as evidenced by bad Engrish in however little writing there is.
2. A creator has a bad work ethic or fails to balance life, work and development. He will claim the release is nearing completion while having barely scratched the surface. The time between updates will vary between a month and several months, during which the game may get an "OnHold" or even "Abandoned" tag here. The developer will sometimes disappear during that time and claim he was away from his computer or couldn't go online so he couldn't upload the latest release, for which he is so very sorry.
   Meanwhile, patrons won't start dropping off in significant numbers just yet, so the creator is still getting paid and he will lie through the teeth and then fail to deliver a worthwhile update.
   If a monthly update usually contained, say, 2000 lines of text and 100 renders, then after disappearing for six months, you could reasonably expected 12,000 lines of text and 600 renders, right? Wrong. The update will be the usual monthly content and the next one will come in after a month (or not) and will still have the usual monthly content.
3. A developer has excellent work ethic, uses Patreon to pay his bills and releases a complete new game every few months. Patrons typically get the game in advance, but the general public has access to it soon afterwards.
4. A game becomes popular, but when it passes a certain threshold (variable, depends on creator), the game is essentially held for ransom and people pay the monthly fee for scraps that are begrudgingly dropped every few months. The developer has no shame accepting tens of thousands of dollars per month (up to a few million over the total lifetime of the project). The top paying suckers patrons spend a total of several thousand dollars for an unfinished game that is worth less and delivers less playable time than a bargain bin title sold for $5.

Meanwhile, there are games created by and published by established studios that hire developers, artists and pay salaries to them, take all the risks and release a complete game, including support and patches for ca. $25. Given this, there is clearly something wrong about Patreon development model here.

The developer in case one is clearly out to get money, not tell a story. It's unreasonable to expect that he would follow through if only he gathered enough traction, and the finished game would probably be unsatisfactory (considering typically poor language), so it's clear it's not a good example.

Case two is a hobbyist who simply gathered like-minded individuals who are willing to support the developer to encourage him to finish the story. Great, but way too many of these games are put on hold and abandoned much too soon, and it's completely untenable.

Case three, there are very few of these developers around. One important distinction is that they don't provide monthly installments, but only complete games. That's how it should be, but there are too few of these around.

Case four is a cancer that Patreon enables. A quick look at Patreon's top adult game developers and glancing over at their creator pages will quickly reveal the worst culprits. It's incredible to compare the money they get to salaries paid to designers, writers, programmers and artists at game studios.
Professional developers create a complete game in half a year and then release it for $25, which pays their salaries and expenditures for another six months.
All while the worst offenders on Patreon shamelessly take several times more during that time and release a half-baked installment that adds an hour of gameplay and then disappear for another half a year.
Worst part about it is, if they ever manage to complete the game, they still ask you for $25 payment to play it right away. (I know there are some creators who provide a complete game to all patrons who supported them even just once during game development, and I was pleasantly surprised by one, but they are in a very small minority.)

In conclusion, my claim is that Patreon may cause irreperable damage to game development.
The cynic in me thinks that professional studios will eventually open Patreon accounts and slow their development cycles to milk the community as much as they can get away with in order to extract the maximum possible value out of patrons.
The optimist in me thinks that this has a positive flip side. Professional studios will be able to afford a slip in schedule and even if they slow down by half, they will still look like a rocket next to a glacier compared to a typical Patreon creator today. This will hopefully raise the bar for them.
The realist adds that many new creators will be dissuaded from starting a new Patreon profile. The optimist happily says this means less dashed hopes when case 1 looks promising but becomes abandoned, and that creators under case 3 will still want to tell their stories, while the pessimist points out this means they won't get traction and may get dissuaded, and this also means fewer developers in case 2 who cater to specific kinks.

What are your thoughts on this topic?

 

[kytee]

All of your examples are enabled by people who don't take proactive control of their money, don't push all the blame onto devs for taking advantage of people's stupidity and laziness.

That being said, remove Patreon and all of the great adult games that were created that were only possible through Patreon support from the beginning and you'll see what impact it really has. No more Dr. Pinkcake, no more Mr. Dots, no more NLT, no more etc., you get the point. Patreon enables people to create niche products, without it you really think actual gaming companies would take on the massive risk on investing into a niche industry like the adult games industry? There's much less risk and a way bigger market for making SFW games or even just straight up porn.

 

[jamdan]

Patreon is the only model for game development.

Developers, even hobbyists, need money to make their games. Assets are pretty expensive, a lot of the clothing assets cost the same as real clothes. Having good enough hardware is expensive. Patreon is really the only way for them to get the funds needed.

Some issues are about the developer themselves. They bite off more than they can chew. Sure, a huge branching game would be really neat. But realistically, it's way too much work to do. So the updates become slow, and eventually leads to the developer giving up and abandoning the game.

Some developers ( maybe even most of them ) are in it to make money. Now that doesn't mean they want to become rich, just do it full time as their job. It's also possible to have a passion for something, yet still want to make money from it. You think pro-athletes would take less money on their contracts unless they got something from it (a chance at a title perhaps?) just because they love playing the game? Nope. Some developers do intentionally delay updates in order to get another month of pledges paid out. Patreon can't really do anything about that though.

However, the patrons themselves can. Un-subscribe. I don't believe people realize how expensive being a patron is, even the lower level ones. $5 per month, over a year, is 60 dollars. That may not seem like a lot, but consider how long it takes to complete a game. Let's call it 2.5 years on average. That ends up being $150 dollars. $150 will get you the elite collector edition of AAA games, all the DLC included. You just paid that price for an adult game you can complete in a day or two.

So Patrons enable bad developers. Not Patreon itself. Patreon is just the middle-man. Patreon and the developers have a symbiotic relationship. The developer gets a platform to raise money. Patreon get their share of that money. Sort of like this website. Developers get free publicity for their game, and pirates get the game itself.

Patreon get a lot of hate, but its misplaced a lot. Without that funding, this niche market wouldn't be nearly as large as it is. The saying " Don't bite the hand that feeds" applies here, I think. Both from people going after Patreon, and developers mistreating their fans. The "bad guy" is the bad developer, and to a lesser extent certain supporters who enable them and attack anyone who dare speak against them.

 

[Hagatagar]

This typically affects creators from less developed countries, as evidenced by bad Engrish in however little writing there is.

I assume this is not deliberate, but it does come across as if you are saying that only people from "less developed countries" can be bad at English.

 

[big numbers]

Patreon get a lot of hate, but its misplaced a lot. Without that funding, this niche market wouldn't be nearly as large as it is. The saying " Don't bite the hand that feeds" applies here, I think. Both from people going after Patreon, and developers mistreating their fans. The "bad guy" is the bad developer, and to a lesser extent certain supporters who enable them and attack anyone who dare speak against them.

I'm confused. Are you for or against criticism? The supporters who enable bad developers would have exactly same reasoning as you do about not "biting the hand that feeds" and "(their developer) being the only model for (their game's) development"

 

[fotogaik]

I assume this is not deliberate, but it does come across as if you are saying that only people from "less developed countries" can be bad at English.

I'm from a less developed country (Poland) and yes, it was deliberate.

There's a certain mix of characteristics in most of Eastern Europe that cause this situation. I figure there's a similar situation in other countries, at least where education is free.

$100 per month is not a lot for somebody who can get that much flipping burgers for a day and when $100 doesn't make a dent in your monthly expenses. However, when your minimum wage is one dollar and minimum monthly salary is $400, an extra $100 becomes a lot (Poland is currently at $4.75 and $727 before taxes, respectively, but there are countries where minimums are lower).

Factor in that these countries are offshoring havens.
You can get a pretty decent job at a call center for much more than minimum monthly.
If you know something about computers and how to fix them, a helpdesk pays even more.
If you know some programming (and RenPy is a good way to introduce yourself to Python), you can get a decent entry-level programming job..
If you can tell a rack server from a desktop PC, some companies (pretend I don't bear a grudge) will hire you off the street for $2,000 doing tech support.

However, all this assumes you know English well enough to hold a conversation and any of these options is more attractive than 10 bucks a month for programming a porn game before it takes off and gathers enough followers to be worthwhile.

If you're in university for CS, if you have some support from your family, own a computer and can book time for calculations on a uni supercomputer, you can make a porn game. That's why there's seemingly an endless supply of developers trying their hand at version 0.1 and disappearing right after.

 

[Carrera]

Which is why I only pay for a finished product.

 

[Hagatagar]

By no means am I denying that it can be very lucrative to get paid in dollars if someone's country has lower purchasing power, nor the possibility that many of the 0.1 [Abandoned] are pure cash-grabs.


As a side note, I am also from Europe, but neither do I live in Poland, nor any other Eastern European country, so of course I can't say much about the conditions there, but I wouldn't call Poland "less developed."

And if I look at the

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, Poland is actually ranked higher than the USA.

Spoiler: IHDI

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Although, if I look at the

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(that's what important in this case) the gap is much bigger (USA rank 3 and Poland rank 37).
But at this point it's all semantics.

 

[Carrera]

By no means am I denying that it can be very lucrative to get paid in dollars if someone's country has lower purchasing power, nor the possibility that many of the 0.1 [Abandoned] are pure cash-grabs.


As a side note, I am also from Europe, but neither do I live in Poland, nor any other Eastern European country, so of course I can't say much about the conditions there, but I wouldn't call Poland "less developed."

And if I look at the

You must be registered to see the links

, Poland is actually ranked higher than the USA.

Spoiler: IHDI

You don't have permission to view the spoiler content. Log in or register now.

Although, if I look at the

You must be registered to see the links

(that's what important in this case) the gap is much bigger (USA rank 3 and Poland rank 37).
But at this point it's all semantics.

I --think-- the above has a lot to do with the ease of getting things like medical care and higher education. I know the U.S. is dogshit when it comes to the accessibility of medical care, yeah there's hospitals everywhere but many folks would rather live in agony than be put into debt for the rest of their lives. A friend of mine needed major brain surgery back in 2003, it was cheaper for him to fly to Japan and live with family there, pay for the surgery, recover, then fly back to the U.S. than it was to have the surgery alone in the U.S. AND the surgeon who did the surgery actually did better in medschool than the 3 surgeons where were actually willing to take his case in the U.S. Most of the surgeons refused because they didn't want to risk their numbers in case he bought the farm.

Don't even get me started on higher education holy shit stick bobby!

 

[Diconica]

The patreon model is good for some projects and not so good for others.
The biggest issue there is no way patrons can verify the person has the skills to do something like game creation or what their work ethics are like. The only way they have any semblance of being able to do that is only subscribe to those or are fairly well established and already have a good track record. The problem there is may the content those people make isn't to their liking.

It might help if there was a way of verifying the publisher was continuing work on the project they are on.
One of the things I hated was publishers / developers who stop a project or start something else up and don't finish what they were on which got me to support them to start with. That and changing the project into something that goes against what they promised.

Could patreon solve this. Yes, in a manor they could but would developers be willing to go along with it. Some probably would begrudgingly to ensure they get paid. They could allow tying the funding to the project.
Second, create a work monitoring system to verify work is being done and allow patrons a glimps into it to see that there is progress going on. If my past employers 2 decades back could monitor my work on stuff I think we are more than capable of creating a system today that would work.

 

[Jofur]

I'm not gonna justify the people who are deliberately making slow progress/are barley working on the game but rake in huge amounts of money. That's just asshole behavior. But at the end of the day, these "whales" are the ones who give me access to a huge amount of decent adult games, for free. So personally I can't really complain about creators abusing Patreon.

I will say this though, as a potential customer. Paying for Patreon as a paywall always seemed insane to me. I'm fine with delaying a release to non-patreons or exclusive behind the scenes stuff. Charitable donations are one thing, but once you go exclusive content it more or less just becomes a legitimate paywall subscription like Netflix or World of Warcraft. And as a consumer that subscription is such INCREDIBLY bad value. It's a weird psychological effect for me, whenever I see exclusive content my mind automatically goes into "customer mode" rather than "charity mode", and as a customer I would never in my life pay 5-10 bucks a month for a fairly simple porn game. Hell I can't even justify paying for a Netflix subscription.

 

[Pretentious Goblin]

I will say this though, as a potential customer. Paying for Patreon as a paywall always seemed insane to me. I'm fine with delaying a release to non-patreons or exclusive behind the scenes stuff. Charitable donations are one thing, but once you go exclusive content it more or less just becomes a legitimate paywall subscription like Netflix or World of Warcraft. And as a consumer that subscription is such INCREDIBLY bad value. It's a weird psychological effect for me, whenever I see exclusive content my mind automatically goes into "customer mode" rather than "charity mode", and as a customer I would never in my life pay 5-10 bucks a month for a fairly simple porn game. Hell I can't even justify paying for a Netflix subscription.

True. Though at least unlike a subscription service, you get a product, a download you can copy and use wherever and share with whomever. Except Luna in the Tavern and any other game that uses online DRM, fuck that business model.

 

[cebulaprim]

Kinda iffy on it, but the more I see games like Trials in Tainted Space or Cloud Meadow, the more I realize that Patreon really does funnel a lot of good money towards projects that don't have the strict, coherent deadlines needed for a neat and trimmed game. Feature creep, content creep, and misplaced priorities are problems that plague what I hoped to be these awesome and tight games, but just having that guarantee of money per month really does things to the mind. And not all of them great, from a consumer's POV.

 

[Cryswar]

Game dev is expensive. Living is expensive. If you do have a team, paying multiple people (who will generally want a biweekly/monthly wage) is also expensive. Neither professional studios nor Patreon elites release full high-quality games every few months - most take years for a sizable even with good progress, and with the recent rise of games-as-a-service it's not uncommon for even the biggest studios out there to continue to release content for a game for 3-5+ years.

Want to commission 2d art? Well, if you want sprites and expressions, expect to pay $150-200+ each unless you can revenue-share an artist or draw well yourself. Multiple poses, outfits, and expressions? We're getting into $300-500+ ranges real fuckin fast, or be a very experienced and skilled artist (but remember, time you spend drawing is time not spent on writing/coding the game). Want 3d art? Better spend a LOT of time in Daz (and potentially buy hundreds or thousands of dollars of assets) or HoneySelect or whatever 3d modeling program floats your boat. Want to commission music? Depends on a lot of factors, but you're generally looking at $200-500 per minute, and AAA professional stuff can be $1000+ a minute. Want a computer that can actually handle high-quality animation and renders? Well... good luck doing that on hopes and prayers.

That money has to come from somewhere, and amateur devs usually don't have 3 million bucks floating around to fund everything. The dream for many is to support themselves with game dev, and well, that means being paid at least enough to live comfortably on, which in many places is gonna be at least 2-5k a month. And that's on top of whatever you will spend on commissions, wages, etc. So you're either rocking something one-time like a Kickstarter (which is also full of scams) and giving up if it doesn't work, or Patreon for the monthly funding.

Part of the Patreon model is lowering the barrier of entry. This can be a good or a bad thing depending on the individual; game development is an incredible amount of work for very little reward unless you get lucky with a strong Patreon start. Right now I'm working about 200 hours a month on my game for a little under $160 a month. I'd be doing A LOT better bagging groceries at my local grocery store, and far better using the Python knowledge I've gained to get a higher paying job, but I knew better than to go into this expecting to get rich lol. I'm just having fun telling a story and shooting the shit with people in discord.

If people actually unsubbed from devs that stopped doing meaningful releases, most of these problems would solve themselves in about a month.

 

[Diconica]

Game dev is expensive. Living is expensive. If you do have a team, paying multiple people (who will generally want a biweekly/monthly wage) is also expensive. Neither professional studios nor Patreon elites release full high-quality games every few months - most take years for a sizable even with good progress, and with the recent rise of games-as-a-service it's not uncommon for even the biggest studios out there to continue to release content for a game for 3-5+ years.

Want to commission 2d art? Well, if you want sprites and expressions, expect to pay $150-200+ each unless you can revenue-share an artist or draw well yourself. Multiple poses, outfits, and expressions? We're getting into $300-500+ ranges real fuckin fast, or be a very experienced and skilled artist (but remember, time you spend drawing is time not spent on writing/coding the game). Want 3d art? Better spend a LOT of time in Daz (and potentially buy hundreds or thousands of dollars of assets) or HoneySelect or whatever 3d modeling program floats your boat. Want to commission music? Depends on a lot of factors, but you're generally looking at $200-500 per minute, and AAA professional stuff can be $1000+ a minute. Want a computer that can actually handle high-quality animation and renders? Well... good luck doing that on hopes and prayers.

That money has to come from somewhere, and amateur devs usually don't have 3 million bucks floating around to fund everything. The dream for many is to support themselves with game dev, and well, that means being paid at least enough to live comfortably on, which in many places is gonna be at least 2-5k a month. And that's on top of whatever you will spend on commissions, wages, etc. So you're either rocking something one-time like a Kickstarter (which is also full of scams) and giving up if it doesn't work, or Patreon for the monthly funding.

Part of the Patreon model is lowering the barrier of entry. This can be a good or a bad thing depending on the individual; game development is an incredible amount of work for very little reward unless you get lucky with a strong Patreon start. Right now I'm working about 200 hours a month on my game for a little under $160 a month. I'd be doing A LOT better bagging groceries at my local grocery store, and far better using the Python knowledge I've gained to get a higher paying job, but I knew better than to go into this expecting to get rich lol. I'm just having fun telling a story and shooting the shit with people in discord.

If people actually unsubbed from devs that stopped doing meaningful releases, most of these problems would solve themselves in about a month.

Game development is expensive. Why?

Well the amount of code actually written each day would shock the vast majority of you. I have a few friends in the industry. We had a bit of a bet going on the amount of time it takes to develop an engine. The bet at the time was I could produce an engine faster than their team in the studio. I won. The reason was simple all the stupid office politics and meetings and play testing and so on. I got a steak dinner out of it and they got to spend the next 3 month trouble shooting their system before it even went to alpha. Things that hung them up were some idiot would want to change the design spec of he engine because they heard about such and such in one article or another and thought it would great to incorporate it.

The other problem was in the way they designed the engine to start with it didn't make it easy for changes to be made. There original thinking was it was to be a prototype to test with then management decided lets just use it rather than make it again and you probably can figure out what happened from there.

These days most games are built on already existing engines. In general there is little programming done in comparison to creating an engine from scratch. That isn't always the case some times it is literally faster to create a simplified engine than even learn the ins and outs of a current engine. It also can be a requirement if you need the performance a current engine won't deliver.

Regardless the same issue still happen in game studios of lets add this in or take this out. They haven't learned their lesson and probably never will.

Art commissions. It all depends on how the person is hired or contracted. If you hire the person as an employee of the company to develop art you contract with them usually covers any art they make on the company time is property of the company. Same for any art they make in relation to work being developed by the company.

If you hire an outside contractor that's going to cost you more money and again depends on the contract. If buy something that is already made well yea you are going to pay for it. Smart companies don't do that unless that piece of art is going significantly increase attention to the product in some way.

The best way to get the price down of contracted art is make them aware of the size of project and number of piece you will need. This however means you planning out the actual story before hand and not just adding shit in as you go. Artists who are looking for a stable income will find it more attractive. Telling them you are going to need 500 images over the length of the project is a lot better than telling them you need 10 fucking images in the next week or so.

Same thing applies to music or any art for that matter. There can be some differences in ownership of art depending on what country you live in most however abide by contract ownership clauses.

Music has one big alternative you don't with most painted art. Computer generated. Computers today can replicate entire Orchestras and generate musical.

If you have the computing power in the house or office. If it isn't working you are doing something wrong. If you have a computer that is there and not doing anything its just taking up space. Give it a task to do.

Tools can make all the difference. One of the systems I am currently working with builds VNs. I don't need to program to create the novel. Its filled in like a time line story board. I simply drag the images in type in the text and so on and click the options I want for character data and so on. If I did the same shit in Renpy for example I would have to code in what I want for each scene and tell it what image to load then write code to deal with character variables and the like.

Some times it pays to develop your own tools to cut down on doing the work you do. There is no reason someone couldn't write a tool to do the same thing for renpy. But has anyone? No.

Modeling.
I can't tell you much about daz I don't use it. I generally use blender or my own ray trace system. The biggest issue I see with others I know is they spend to much time watching renders. I let my server batch process them. While its rendering I can be doing other stuff. I look at the scenes after and if it needs a change then. Then I will submit the change and resubmit those scenes and again let it run and do something else. Only an idiot wastes time sitting around to see how each render comes out. Manage time better.

You are right on the aspect anything you can do yourself is cheaper.

As for computer systems. Instead of buying everything new go for refurbished servers and work stations. You do need to know a bit though about hardware or be willing to do some research. Some of them come with proprietary power supply which may not work with the video cards you want to put in. Also the chassis needs to be able to fit them in. The current works station I am using had the right size power supply but the power connector for the video card wasn't adequate. I also have an EE and knew enough about the system I simply modded the power supply. This option saved me a chunk of money over buying new system.

If you look at the overall issue of why game development is expensive there are a number of reasons. First is shitty management and then even shittier problem solving skills. Not having clear set design goals and making changes for no good reason costs time and money. If your solution to a problem is to throw money at it than look for other ways to solve it well its going to cost more money and people will take advantage of it. If you make stupid management choices like only contracting for individual art or buying something rather than contracting for longer terms it is going to cost you more money.

Note: You might not be able to guarantee the funding keeps up. In that case stipulate it in the contract that the continuation of the contract is dependent on continued support of patrons and the quality of work returned and so on. This way they know that hey it could dry up and it gives you an out. If however they do good work and the patrons appreciate it then they will continue to have more work come there way. You could even offer them exclusive work on the project regarding certain characters and so on. Also make a point about it being also dependent on the working relationship they bring to the table. If they aren't willing to fix an issue with something and you can't use it ...

 

[arcaos]

I feel like the copy-paste hentai puzzle games are the ultimate refutation to people who think porn games should either be per-release or direct sales only. If you want to encourage developers to churn out low effort content, make them depend on direct sales. Those same indie devs who you complain about releasing a v0.1 and ghosting are just going to release that same v0.1 disguised as a complete game to bring in direct sales. The difference is you can actually sample the content before you decide to support them on patreon.

 

[Fatalmasterpiece]

Nothing OP mentions has to do with Patreon. It only has to do with the fact that some developers are shitty people and poor businessmen. This is true of anyone running any business anywhere.
You could say "Strip mall untenable model for small business" then complain how the fast food workers at the local burger joint are lazy, don't have enough speed, quality etc. (aka be a Karen)
OP mentions how games on Patreon are available free elsewhere while also complaining devs "worst offenders on Patreon shamelessly take several times more during that time and release a half-baked installment" bro, nothing is forcing people to pay these ARTISTS and WRITERS for their existence. If you are so offended by them asking people to generously pay for their dev time then... simply don't? No one is breaking your arm to pay an artist for his time to draw your entertainment. None of these people are getting rich off Patreon. Even the mere handful of devs making $10k+ a month typically have a team & high development costs for their project. Guys like Savin (CoC) employ over a dozen writers and artists. We are not talking Bezos levels of profit margins here. After taxes, fees, overhead and costs most of these people would be lucky to be making $40k a year, working full time to create purely discretionary entertainment for you. You know, less than $20 an hour to pour their hearts and souls into writing and artwork, which you can get for free if you want.
This is some of the most privileged, entitled bs OP
You can't demand a service while simultaneously degrading those who provide it for you.

 

[rocketMonkey]

From what I gather after having read the replies on this thread, the fact of the matter is that Patreon is just a middle-man; the issue is not really on them. Ultimately it's the consumers who make the choice to support devs, of which some may be the bad apples.

like many have mentioned, if people vote with their wallet in a wiser manner, the problem would be solved.

I guess the problem is that Patreon is not strictly a marketplace, but a donation platform. The 'consumers' in this case may not be in a consumers mindset, but think of their payment as donations to support a developer that they like instead.

 

[Obscure]

Games take grit to make. Not necessarily skills or ability. Not porno games anyway. But definitely grit.

It's a lot easier to work on a game tomorrow then today. And you would do better work if you waited till you was well rested, straightened out your hours, cleaned the apartment and colour co-ordinated your socks.

Generally that is why your 0.1 Alpha never updates and your never ending projects lose their way.

All about the socks.

 

[big numbers]

From what I gather after having read the replies on this thread, the fact of the matter is that Patreon is just a middle-man; the issue is not really on them.

Patreon is a middleman, yes, but they are also the reason why the western porn game industry is stagnating. But people here aren't going to acknowledge that and will defend Patreon to their dying breath because a cock in the hand is worth two in the bush.