I hate the fact that people make this about money and the number of Patreons. Those things have never been important to me. Yes, I lost a lot of Patreons after Maltdors ego-trip, but that's not the main issue. The bigger problem is what this does for my motivation to keep this project going when I constantly need to fight trolls and people that take personal pleasure in sabotaging this project.
4 years ago, I wrote a story called 2nd Chance. I hadn't any plans of sharing that with anyone, but after spending more than a year writing the story, I was curious if anyone else would enjoy it so I published it on F95. I did not have a Patreon or did any effort to make money. All I wanted to know was if there were someone out there that would enjoy my story. As expected, 99% of the players on F95 hated the game/story because it was a amateurish game with no renders. However, a few people took their time to play through the entire game and found enjoyment from it. They encouraged me to continue writing and create another season of the story.
That lead to more people enjoying my stories. Suddenly just 98% of the players on F95 felt the need to tell me how much they hated my work. I never cared about those 98%, I wanted to create something for those 2% who liked my stories. The big problem was that I didn't have any talent when it came to creating art or have the economy to hire someone to do that for me. Some of my followers wanted me to start a Patreon site so they could try to raise the necessary money, and hesitantly I agreed to do that.
As expected, I didn't get many Patrons and I was fine with that. However, the few Patreons that I got were people that enjoyed my stories and wanted to support me. This was suddenly an arena where I could publish a story for those who enjoyed my work without putting it out on F95zone with all it's trolls and negativity. Suddenly writing was fun again and I found the inspiration that I needed to start planning and writing The Higher Society. This was supposed to be an exclusive story for my handful of followers.
Unfortunately, someone talked me into releasing a pilot on F95zone to try to get more followers. Suddenly all the trolls were back, and they sucked all the enjoyment out of this project. They couldn't respect that I created something exclusively for my followers. I tried to explain that I would release the story on F95zone when the story was finished, but that wasn't good enough. I then agreed to release the updates with a delay. The 0.4 version was published on F95 when the Patreons had been given the 0.5 version. Still, this wasn't good enough for the trolls on this site. So now the trolls become Patreons just so they can release the newest version on F95zone immediately when it's released there.
When I asked one of the trolls why he did this, his answer was "Because I can".
I have a full-time job. I have friends, family and other interests in my life. This project is taking way too much time away from things that I enjoy in life and if I need to fight troll who is trying their best to sabotage this project then it's just not worth it. However, I do feel bad about those people who have supported me from the start and was hoping to one day see my games finished.