I don't know anything about the Irphaeus vs Patreaon situation, and frankly don't care.
What I can tell you is that Irphaeus has to give the game away for free. Honey Select, HS2, Koikatsu and any other Illusion game are sold as games and not as content creation tools or assets. That's why you never see these VNs for sale on Steam or other sites. Patreon is a grey area in that you technically are not buying any games but supporting an artist creating content. But that loophole only works if everyone has access to it. For HS games, technically, you are creating fan art. If your HS fan art is behind a paywall that can only be accessed by paying for it then the loophole falls apart because you are now making people pay for art assets that belong only to Illusion. The staggered release dates is another loophole that creators use to encourage others to pay more for their work. But in the end, all games created with any of Illusion's software is ultimately free to the general public (well technically, it all belongs to Illusion but I don't think we'll see them trying to collect). If you want to actually own your own work that others are obligated to pay for, you need to use DAZ, Blender or any other tool that was created for that purpose.
