While the dev isn't slave to anybody, once he takes customers' money, he does owe them a closure, an ending, at the very least. Besides, only itchio and steam were nuked, he could still upload elsewhere and especially on patreon, where most his income is coming from. The bar is very low nowadays that we are happy they care to at least release statement about the immediate quit. People are justified to be disappointed.
Unity Pleasure Drive [v0.2.3 EA] [NetworkMike]
No.
That's now how Patreon works. The whole idea is it comes from the original idea of "Patrons", as in art patrons. The Nobility or Mechant Class would often pledge money for artistic or scientific works on an ongoing basis, and pull funding if they didn't like the progress or were no longer pleased with the subject. With Patreon, you pledge money monthly and you can pull your monthly pledge when you feel like you aren't getting what you're paying for anymore.
So what the author did is they were transparent, and said "Hey, I'm going to stop working on this because of recent events". In my opinion, this is fairly okay as far as closing down development. People have notice, and they can cancel their ongoing monthly pledges if they wish. But at no point (to the best of my knowledge) was a full complete game guaranteed in exchange for pledges. At best, if the game launched on steam, they likely would have given out full game keys to those who pledges a number of months. To me, this is fine.
Now, let's say the Dev strung everyone along for like 8 or 9 months, or a year, or two, and didn't deliver any promised updates or game or whatever. Well, that's pretty shitty. Still though, if they aren't delivering what you want, you could have pulled your pledges, but when the Dev is actively decieving you it becomes more of a moral problem.
If you stick around here long enough, you'll see plenty of Patreon/Subscribestar/etc. drama over devs just milking their patrons/subscribers without delivering and then abandoning their game with no notice.
Yes, that is true. But being denied the use of Steam is a huge loss in potential revenue. It's harder to argue whether a game will make more money on Patreon or Steam (really popular ones will make a lot more money on steam, while most games if they maintain their patron base they'll make more money on Patreon over the long term), but most publish on both if they can and being on both Patreon AND Steam means you make a lot more money than just being on Patreon. Given the very game-y nature of their game (as opposed to just another VN), they were likely counting on that Steam revenue, since it exposes their game to a whole new audience that they wouldn't have found on F95zone or Patreon or social media alone.
Yeah I'm disappointed too; everyone should be disappointed. However, the dev did the cost benefit analysis after the market changed, and decided that a non-compliant game is no longer worth their time. I'm not going to be too mad at them. They announced it fairly quickly and were transparent about it.
Do you prefer to suck the dev's dry balls, or do you like them sweaty? Whatever your preference, I hope you enjoy.
I disagree with you. Personally the reason I subscribe to developers on Patreon is because I do expect them to work towards fully completing their games. Sometimes shit happens and either they are literally prevented from continuing their work from one day to another or financial issues don't make it viable long-term anymore. The latter is case in this situation (allegedly), but even if their assessment is correct (which might not be), they still need to preserve a good will, a good relationship towards their customers, their subscribers. To me, randomly pulling out and abandoning the project completely for such a reason makes me want to not support them anymore. Just because every developer doesn't literally spell out word by word "I promise to work to complete every project I start" doesn't mean this is not how Patreon works. This is a subjective matter because each person may subscribe for different reasons.
I accept that I can't tell how much money he'd have earned through Steam, as there IS a pretty big potential, but you can't really build a stable argument upon that either. You don't know whether his grand total on that platform would have been $2000 or $200.000. It does boost the discovery on the other hand.
At the end of the day, it seems we provide support for different reasons and we have different expectations and standards towards developers whom we pay money to. I can see where you are coming from but you are a little bit too lenient in my opinion.
Yes! Right there: it makes it so you do not want to support them anymore. Yank that pledge/membership, please, turn off that money spigot. I'm not advocating that you "stick by your man" so to speak, I'm just not going to get mad at them about deciding they no longer want to develop the game, because they clearly communicated it in a timely manner. Anyone who has an ongoing pledge specifically for the development of this game? End the pledge/subscription, the game is no longer being developed. Or if you just really like the dev, keep the pledge I guess? But there's nothing promised here so it makes a lot less sense.
It's about the business arrangement that is provided by the platform. Sure, people might subscribe for different reasons, but the platform only provides protections for subscribers (and very few of them) in specific instances. You aren't guaranteed anything unless it was spelled out. I'm advocating that you go into every patreon/subscribestar/whatever monthly pledge with an expectation that the creator will only deliver what is specifically spelled out, and anything beyond that is hopes and dreams. When the arrangement no longer suits you, yank that money. You can always turn it back on if they provide something that suits you again.
My argument mainly is just that, well, like life, you aren't entitled to a happy ending.
Do you prefer milk or cheese? Probably a mix, right? Enjoy. NetworkMike is a lucky dude to have such a caring girl take care of him.
Objectively speaking I don't disagree with anything you said. That's certain triple A studios have been abusing their respective playerbase as well. Ofc I'm not comparing the developer of this adult game to them 1:1. But what he needs to understand, as a person who is doing business, is that it's not good to become known for immediately leaving as soon as the slightest hardship arises and abandoning everything on the spot. Whether anything is spelled out and promised is a solid argument in court, but that's not how reputation among one's customers work. It's fair to call out people who are too harsh, but at the end of the day, some damage to his reputation will be inevitable. In practice, it might cause him to have less subscribers than he'd have had otherwise in the future.
marcing115
New Member
- May 22, 2018
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