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Hey guys, I haven’t watched any movies in a while, been busy with work lately. Today I rewatched Edge of Tomorrow, and damn, it’s such an awesome movie. You know, I really don’t like when aliens are just drawn with two arms and two legs. Feels lazy, like a lack of imagination. But in this movie, they actually look alien, weird tentacle creatures that move in strange, unpredictable ways. Loved that.
So… yeah… sorry I haven’t posted anything in a while. I’ve been dealing with tech support stuff. Also, honestly, I just haven’t been in the mood to write or work on anything. Needed a break to clear my head. Well, if anyone missed it, boosty account got permanently banned. That means it can’t be recovered, and the game has completely lost its funding, since boosty was the only source of income. And you’ll never guess why it got banned. Cover your kids' eyes, here’s a direct quote from boosty support:
Any pornographic content is prohibited. Oh man, he creates porno? That’s disgusting! They pointed out a few rules I apparently broke, including
discrediting content. Like… what? Who the fuck did I discredit? Also, yeah, their rules do say that porn and even erotic content are not allowed. I guess many platforms do that just to stay in control of what’s on their site. But before I created the page, I actually contacted their support, showed them the game and some art, and they told me:
Dude, it’s fine, go ahead. But now? They just shut me down and wouldn’t talk further. Okay.
As you might’ve noticed, there are no paid subscription tiers here (at least I hope I didn’t mess something up, let me know if I did), because I can’t withdraw money due to sanctions and SWIFT being blocked in my country. Monetizing the game has become pretty hard. Platforms like itch, Steam, etc., all use SWIFT. I recently talked to a more experienced dev, and we agreed that maybe the only realistic way to monetize right now is through telegram subscriptions. But honestly, I think that’s kind of a dead end, people just don’t like using unfamiliar services or payment methods. There might be a chance with Substar, but they take forever to approve accounts. Based on Reddit posts, the process can take months, and I can't even check what payment methods they support right now. So yeah… honestly, I have no idea what to do. And that’s not the only problem. Even if I could monetize the game through Patreon, how many people would actually subscribe? 10? I seriously doubt I’d get more than 20 in the next four months. Things weren’t going great before, and now it’s a complete shitshow. Since its release 2.5 years ago, the game has struggled to earn more than $400 a month, with maybe $500 in a good month. Why? Is the game really that bad? Looks like yes. I tried not to think about it lately and just focused on making the visual novel.
Still, I don’t want to abandon it. I love this game, it’s like my baby. Yeah, it sucks that it’s not making money, but honestly, I’m making 3 times more now from a regular job than I did from subscriptions. I just want to create something of my own. And I love working on the novel. Just need to figure out how to make it work.
While I keep working on version 0.9, I’ll try to decide what to do next. Maybe I’ll make the game completely non-commercial, treat it like a hobby, and work on it in the evenings?
Anyway, no matter how things go, I’ll have to make version 0.9 alone. I went back to my old job, and I work on the game in the evenings. What else can I do? If I stop eating, I’ll die in two weeks and still won’t finish 0.9. So yeah, not really an option.
This is complete crap. But I don’t know what else to do right now.
To summarize:
• Will version 0.9 come out? Yes.
• When? I don’t know.
Right now I’m not sure how (or if) I’ll monetize the game. But if there’s any news, I’ll post it here. All posts will be free and visible to everyone, though updates won’t be super frequent.
Feel free if you’ve got something to say, or just send me a personal message, if you want.
