In my opinion removing animations from the public version of the game is not a good idea because unfortunately many people here may not like this idea and thus they will not even consider becoming your patrons and we know that it is often thanks to a community like here that many games have been successful and have found their future patrons.
Moreover prepare two different versions of the game it is also additional work for you and you still have no guarantee that someone will not share your game here in the version only for patrons because this is how this forum works, that games leak and someone who is a patron of the game usually shares it here.
There are other additional opportunities to reward your patrons (you can always see other devs what bonuses are offered to their patrons if you have no ideas yourself), such as additional special renders, early access to the game, etc.
We already had devs here who prepared two different versions of their game, including one that was cut or even censored for public access and most of them quickly gave up on this idea, among others for reasons that I described above.
Of course this is only my personal opinion and advice for you, which you do not have to take into account because in the end it is your game and you decide what to do.
I wish you of course good luck with your game.
Hello Mario,
First of all, thank you so much for your inputs.
We all have our opinions and I thank you very much for sharing them with me.
On the one hand I tell you that I totally agree with much of what you say. I would love to make a single version of the game available to everyone, it's what I did in the first installment and I really believed that that was how all the others were going to be. But I had a problem. For 2 months of work I made 20 bucks. I'm not complaining, I'm just giving you my perspective. What's the problem with that? None, I will try to continue working, as long as possible, and doing my best no matter how much I earn for it, but I do believe that the people who believed in me and supported me and continue to do so deserve something extra. I have as rewards in some tiers extra renders and other things but I really want to give them something else. As I said in a previous post, animations are not necessary to enjoy the game, they are an extra. In the free version I replace them with still images in succession, which gives an idea of animation. Also, the animations are my weakest point, they don't have the quality that I would like and although I hope to be able to make them better and better, today I'm not at that point.
Regarding that someone can filter them, it is a possibility I don't deny it, and that is why each Patreon receives an exclusive link with the animations encoded for that person, if someone leaks them I will know exactly who it was and thus be able to take any action, although I really hope I don't have to get to that point.
Giving the animations to my Patreons is an extra way of thanking them. If someone only wants to harm me and decides to share them with everyone else, thus depriving me of the possibility that someone else can give me their support, the only thing that is going to achieve is that I will have to abandon the project. I really like what I do, I try to do the best I can in order to provide a quality product. The truth is that in order to continue doing it I need to try to increase the amount of money I collect per month and more than anything, I need to show the people who support me and trust me how much I appreciate their effort, especially in such difficult times like the ones we live in today, and giving them the animations is an extra way of thanking them.
Finally, I know that some people are not going to like my decision. They may not play my game anymore, they may give me bad reviews simply as revenge and not for what my game really is, anything can happen, but the truth is that if someone enjoy my game and can't or want to support me, which is totally understandable, they will also need to understand that they have no right to complain. They can continue enjoying it the way it is or they can leave it and play another of the thousands that are posted on this site, of which, as I said many times before, many are great quality.
I really hope everyone understand me, but if not, you have every right not to.
I apologize for the length of the post and the number of errors that it surely has.
I really hope to keep seeing you all here, but if not, I also wish you the best and that you find the game or games that are best for you and enjoy them even more.
