I dream of NSFW devs adopting a model that emulates conventional early access on established platforms, without getting Steam involved. One-time full game payment via itch.io, or other platform that allows you to update the file(s) associated with a purchase. I want to spend money on games, but I do not support subscription models. And I don't pay to be second class customer who gets updates with delay, relative to subscribers. Sell me permanent access to the most recent version of the game, and I'll gladly pay.
Sadly, I doubt that such a model would be very profitable, as long as subscriptions are the norm. A whole lot easier to milk suckers for small monthly sums than selling an actual product. Plus, discoverability isn't exactly high for indie games sold via itch.io
One of the big problems driving this all, is that there's no big studios making NSFW games. It's just too much of a risk in terms of revenue and reputation for large, well-known studios to make big NSFW games. This presents a double-edged sword: the space is wide open for indie devs—simultaneously open for opportunity and innovation, but also puts projects at risk of typical indie dev issues like not being completed, funding issues, etc.
I love that you want to spend money on games! I hate that subscription models have become the norm. When a new dev enters the NSFW space, they are in competition with all the games that operate on subscription models. Unless you're multi-talented and can program, make music, draw art, animate, and test gameplay, you're going to need to hire an artist at some point. Artists cost money and even the cost of a small nsfw indie game ($10k-$50k) can seem tremendously daunting to risk one's own capital on that (especially once it's your first game).
When a game does become successful, it's very tempting to just coast on that success and suddenly the incentive of grinding to put out content goes away. For every game that succeeds in this way, I'm sure there are countless others that get abandoned before they even make it to itch.io (let alone Steam!)
Even with patreon and kickstarter etc, it's still a tough ask for people's hard earned money to essentially be invested in a dream.
I'm trying to do it the old school way: make an awesome feature-complete game, ship it completely done, then pray I make back my investment (forget trying to make a profit for now).
In the demo (and in the full game) you see the full character sprites for the men.
