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why can’t you mention f95zone in discord? F95zone is the reason I’m on discord
There's a disclaimer in the OP with their stance on sharing. You can take it however you want. It's also worth noting that moderators keep the OP updated so a dev who dropped one of their initial releases might be long gone from the forum.
Straight away, Devs that are expecting people to give them financial support can't be honest and win when it comes to protecting their reputation around sharing sites. Whatever their stance they have to at least say they do not approve.
If they're actively dropping content, paying supporters may feel betrayed or something or it may suggest to potential paying supporters that they're happy to give them stuff for free. It hurts how some people view them and potentially negates the promo/exposure they're getting from being involved with a large community like this one; they might get new supporters from the forum but lose supporters from off-platform who think "fuck it I'm allowed to get it free." So they can't be honest even if they are complicit.
But it's also in their best interest for a dev to be involved and control the content that's on sharing communities to the best extent they can because if a build with "bonus content" such as malware or viruses starts getting passed around it can make them look bad if people think they're responsible.
So yeah, it's better for a dev to be here but openly disapprove.
There's also the potential for drama with other devs if they're seen as supporting a platform where another dev's work is being shared without their permission. Because some devs don't view piracy as beneficial in any way, they don't see the value in the word of mouth promo and they don't believe that the "pirates" that do actually decide to speak with their wallets and turn into supporters exist in large enough numbers. I don't have the stats to know who's right and I probably don't have the brains to understand the stats either.
That's all a bit of a chonky read but I don't know how to TLDR it. It's kind of muddy and devs might have many reasons for the things they do, this is just my best guess on how most of them probably think.