the dilemma of where to buy adult games

[Manuya]

Greetings,

i'm a new member & this is my first post, i didn't know much about adult games before about a month ago i saw a promotion for dreams of desire while surfing so i got intrigued and found out it's a game so i started searching for a store to buy it and my only 2 viable options are steam or patron, the first option is virtually impossible since i'm living in Germany and we have here strict rules against selling adult content in areas where it's maybe accessible to people under 18 like steam which is fully censored even swear words, the 2nd is patron and i don't understand nor fuck with it and developers for adult games don't sell steam keys on other online keys retailers or if the game is too hardcore they can't sell it on steam

i'm not here to virtue signaling or anything like that but for me personally i don't condone piracy in any shape or form i consider it a moral crime, and every creator or artist should get paid for their intellectual properties. so i spent about a weak wrestling with this until i cracked and download it for free and then couple of more games like come inside which is a great game that got abandoned because of the failed patron model & buried desires which is a masterpiece of a game not only as an adult game but in general and after more than a year the game still at the beginning and i'm afraid the same will happen here

so the point that i want to get at which is why don't a couple of investors and big adult games developers get together to create adult games storefront with various payment method options which is accessible everywhere for finished games and a program to help beginner developers with ambitious and promising games with contributions out of their own pockets or buying the ip upfront and giving royalties and keep the patron option for some of the individuals who's can't develop full time but on the side because they need to put food on their tables through regular jobs

for me personally if such a store is existed and certified by developers i will treat it exactly like steam that is, if you think your finished game is worth as much as AAA titles 60 or 40 euro and looks good for my taste i have 0 problems paying for these games the asking price

i would love to hear the thoughts and inputs of this forum community
cheers

 

[Icarus Media]

i'm not here to virtue signaling or anything like that but for me personally i don't condone piracy in any shape or form i consider it a moral crime.
cheers

Yar! Ye best start believin' in pirate forums....yer in one!

But some developers let people pirate it, it spreads the game around, I've seen on discord and other forums discussion of games people like so from a marketing point of view it CAN (not always guaranteed) bring additional income which the developer might not have had in the first place because no-one knew the game existed.

so i spent about a weak wrestling with this until i cracked and download it for free and then couple of more games
cheers

Welcome Lad or Lass, ye be one of us now! Pull up a chair and drink yer stein of Rum! Feel free to listen t' older pirates and thar tales of internet skullduggery! Be careful around the Grog Wench.

so the point that i want to get at which is why don't a couple of investors and big adult games developers get together to create adult games storefront with various payment method options which is accessible everywhere for finished games and a program to help beginner developers with ambitious and promising games with contributions out of their own pockets or buying the ip upfront and giving royalties and keep the patron option for some of the individuals who's can't develop full time but on the side because they need to put food on their tables through regular jobs
cheers

The problem, at least in my personal view is 2 fold:

* Payment processors
* Adult Industry Stigma

Ask most developers on here and they'll tell you of their or other devs patreon woes. Art and games censored, steam likewise with some games where a patch has to be found. Payment processors dont like any payment or money going to or from adult industry services. I'm told that it's either that there is a higher risk of fraud, money laundering etc, that the payment processors are very right wing Xtian and dislike pornography as sinful and how dare people decide to do with their own talents and their own bodies what they like! I've also been told that they are far left SJW virtue signallers who think pornography/adult games etc are exploitative of women (even though I hear female performers get paid more than the male ones, not sure if true, if someone can get me hard data on that I'd like to hear it) and sexist for how female characters are portrayed. Regardless of if one or more of these is true it's a major obstacle and dumpster fire to navigate.

Itch.io seems to be an okay storefront for now, unless anyone tell me otherwise.

 

[F4C430]

so the point that i want to get at which is why don't a couple of investors and big adult games developers get together to create adult games storefront with various payment method options which is accessible everywhere for finished games and a program to help beginner developers with ambitious and promising games with contributions out of their own pockets or buying the ip upfront and giving royalties and keep the patron option for some of the individuals who's can't develop full time but on the side because they need to put food on their tables through regular jobs

If it were that simple, it would have been done already. In fact, i have seen it attempted a couple times in the past but they all failed. I think it was because it never caught on and they had to shut down because they were only losing money. People were so used to pirating that it was too hard to convince them to pay. It was also hard to get developers onboard with the idea so the selection of games was always very small.

https://f95zone.to/threads/where-can-one-buy-porn-games.31908/
https://f95zone.to/threads/wheres-the-best-place-to-buy-adult-games.59573/

 

[anne O'nymous]

so the point that i want to get at which is why don't a couple of investors and big adult games developers get together to create adult games storefront with various payment method options which is accessible everywhere for finished games and a program to help beginner developers with ambitious and promising games with contributions out of their own pockets or buying the ip upfront and giving royalties and keep the patron option for some of the individuals who's can't develop full time but on the side because they need to put food on their tables through regular jobs

For the same reasons that there's no effective independent online sex-shops (they all are a showcase for a bigger site), and really few software online stores that deal with adult content. Payment processors accept to deal with pornography, and more globally adult content, but they put one major condition to this, a frozen provision fund for an amount around $10 millions.

It's not, and never was, that payment processors have moral issues, they have financial issues. There's fraud, and frauds are more frequents online. When someone complain because he was victim of a fraud, it's the payment processor that have to pay for it ; the vendor don't have the product anymore, it's natural that he receive the money for this, as for the victim, it's natural that he get back the money he didn't spend on a product that he don't have. And it happen that, when it's pornography and adult content, there's around ten times more frauds.
That's why it's difficult for someone to get the agreement from the major payment processors. You have to prove that you are serious, that you'll take all the possible measure to reduce as much as possible the risk of fraud, and to give a provision fund that will be used to refund the victims of frauds. Will a couple of investor and big adult developers can fulfill the first two conditions, it need more than this to fulfill the last one. And it need more than a couple of investor and big adult developers to convince a big investor to jump on board and put at least $10 millions on the table.

It's not impossible, among others itch.io, Steam and Patreon did it. But they are well established companies, have tenths of employees, and the sensible content is just a part of their business. If for some reason they loose the agreement for adult content, they'll continue to exist and make benefits, therefore one will more likely put money on the table, since there's less risk to loose it all if something goes wrong.


This being said, in the 90's, when XXX studios where making games, sex-shops where one of the place where you could buy them. So it's perhaps possible to convince the few online sex-shop companies to add a software section to their store. It would offer more places for developers to sell their game but this mean that they would also have more to do beside making the game.
And anyway the said sex-shop companies would agree only if there's enough products. What mean that the few professional studios (like Winged Cloud by example) have to be involved in this. They are the only ones to have a catalog big enough to guaranty that the store will not be almost empty, and so convince the company that it really worth it.

 

[Jofur]

i'm not here to virtue signaling or anything like that but for me personally i don't condone piracy in any shape or form i consider it a moral crime, and every creator or artist should get paid for their intellectual properties.

While it doesn't apply to most (if any)porn games. I consider it fully morally justified to pirate games and media from large corporations like Activision or TakeTwo who operate their businesses out of tax havens. I.E, they don't help pay for hospitals, education or infrastructure to the degree they should, but in exchange they provide the service of giving out free games.

Having said that I still pirate 99% of my games and media, morally justified or not because I'm a cheap fucker. The only games I buy is stuff that I seriously love to death.

so the point that i want to get at which is why don't a couple of investors and big adult games developers get together to create adult games storefront

Much like music most people don't want to outright pay for porn anymore. The internet made it too easy to get free shit, legal or not. As good old Gabe Newell put it: "Piracy is a service problem." And for a lot of people when you can just type "blowjob" into pornhub and fap, instead of having to mess around signing up for a website and input a bunch of credit card information for the same exact stuff you can find way easier for free. Paying doesn't sound all that worthwhile. I would assume for many that mindset carries over into games as well. People are so used to fapping for free, so why start paying for porn games all of a sudden?