Oh jeez I forgot to report the thread yesterday.
So, if I read you guys' replies right, it seems like you are active members in the F95zone community who are into the "try before buy" strategy. That's the most common cited reason for pirating stuff. And that's what I would have done a few years ago.
When I was younger, I would pirate Japanese BL games because 1°) I had 0 money whatsoever up until I started working and earning my own and 2°) importing obscure physical Japanese games was an absolute nightmare I wasn't willing nor rich enough to go through. I had no problem buying stuff like Coming Out On Top though, that was easy to get online.
In my survey's answers, I feel a general sense of guilt from people who admit to not having the money or the will to buy BL games. For example, someone from the Philippine said:
"I...actually pirated all of the BL games I've played SN: I'm so sorry creators please forgive my broke ass child self. But I'm an adult now so I promise to support properly this time !!! :bowing_emoji:
I'm a bit ? at this answer, because most respondents admitting to piracy would just say "now that I have a job I'm paying back for the games I pirated". They DO the thing and then talk about it. But this person didn't do the thing. They say they're gonna do it... eventually. Which makes me wonder how common that mindset actually is.
The Thai person who streamed a pirated build of the game (though he didn't publicly release anything past the demo) told me he didn't know the build was pirated, and someone just gave him the link. Another person on Discord told us they found some nice game to play on PornGamesHub (which turned out to have The Symbiant too) and when I told them that it was a pirate website, answered that they now feel bad and don't know which websites are legit.
I can't help but wonder whether they were aware in some capacity that those were pirate websites, but stayed in denial so they wouldn't feel bad, or if computer literacy fell that much for someone not to be able to distinguish a pirate website from a legit one.
Somewhat relatedly, another person from Poland said:
Most of the bl games' prices are outrageous. Clearly a lot of the developers doesn't know shit about financial efficiency, buys expensive CGs and then acts surprised they can't make money out of their games. It's not a lucrative market and will never be, so they should focus on being creative with the plot instead of trying to make an AAA in a fucking renpy. Of course I wouldn't spend $20 dollars on a REGULAR book, even with nice pictures, so what the hell are they thinking when it comes to the virtual ones? And if anyone selected "more than $60" in one of the previous questions, then they are clearly retarted. (typo on 'retarted' included)
And then proceeds to tell me all about these >20$ games they must have bought off Steam.
There have been several games that I've either backed or purchased due to having played the F95 builds, this one being one notable example.
I would probably be a bit more generous with opening up my wallet, but I've seen (and backed…sigh) far too many games that have crippling developmental issues to blindly trust them moving forward. I'm glad that game development is more accessible than ever these days, but it feels like far too many developers follow a few Unity/Unreal tutorials and immediately open up a crowd-funding campaign for their magnum opus.
There's been a growing sense of distrust toward Kickstarter games these past 2-3 years following the big honeymoon phase Kickstarted enjoyed in 2014-2017. Far too many people felt scammed out of their money, and I still see today some games having their developer go AWOL and make you wonder they're still even alive. On the other hand, the developers who did manage to release a game tend to be trusted more and their returning backers are more likely to back higher tiers (like the $1000+ ones).
By the way, HeartCoreDev has been favorited 55 times on kemono.party.
