We need more transparency and communication

[VIHooligan]

Hello lads and ladies alike, hope your day has been going well and if it hasn't then i hope it gets better. Anywho, onto the point of this post.
As much as i like services such as patreon or subscribestar, I think there is a problem that has been slowly stewing in the background. I'm not sure what I would specifically call it but im going to go with accountability. Those platforms were intended as a medium for people to support their favorite artists/devs who otherwise lacked a means of publicity. Sorry if that isn't the exact definition of why patreon or subscribestar were made but bear with me here. It was all fine for the beginning as the market was new and had devs that were already passionate and willing to show the result of the support they received.
As time went on and the platforms grew larger and more popular, so did the number of supporters. Now in theory thats awesome and what they deserve for their work, but sadly that isn't how it plays out for the most part. Here's where the problem lies I think, due to the lack of accountability on the devs side with little to no incentive to follow through with what they say, more and more devs old and new are just trying to wind the hype train up as fast as they can and let er rip while they sit back and enjoy the melodies.
I dont know specifically how I would suggest to fix this problem but it's an open subject for any who have an interest in it. In my opinion I think if there was something in the rules/conditions that required some kind of pre-determined minimum amount of content to be shown/released before they actually get their money might be worth considering. Obviously thats a very rough idea that could use fine tuning but its just to get the thought out there. I just feel like more and more creators that i knew and ones i don't are doing this, I mean look at the content/update drought, there's only a few decent games still putting out consistent updates but you can bet your ass the others are still racking in dough . Idk, feel free to criticize, laugh, agree, comment whatever. Cheers, take care everyone!

 

[desmosome]

They are not forcing anyone to support them. If people are unsatisfied with the work ethic or content, they can stop supporting them.

The patreon model is based on the concept of the patron of the arts. It's an interpersonal relationship (albeit in a crowdsourced system). You like the person and their work, so you financially support them so they could continue to do what they do. If they turned out to be a fraud, well you fucked up. Try to vet people better next time.

There is a misconception that the patreon system is some kind of business transaction where you are buying a product or some sort of contractual system for a service. No, you are simply supporting the creator of the product financially.

Whereas before, you had to be a rich dude, the patreon system allowed people to pool their money to act like a patron of the art. That's really all it is. People need to take personal responsibility for their own money.

 

[VIHooligan]

Don't get me the wrong way, I agree with you about people being responsible about their own money. I'm not trying to say down with patreon or anything either. I just think their should be some kind of incentive or reason for them to actively show their work instead of just hypeing. At that point there would be more clarity and people could have a better idea on if they wanted to pledge than just a wild hope. Edit - Bad grammar

 

[anne O'nymous]

[...] more and more devs old and new are just trying to wind the hype train up as fast as they can and let er rip while they sit back and enjoy the melodies.

Are you patron for all of them to make such affirmation ?

Creators on Patreon have the possibility to freeze the pledge, and some (many?) are doing it when, for a reason or another, they can't reach their deadline. Of course, creators doing this can't be seen as being the majority, but the opposite is also true. It's not because a creator need time to release the next update, that he take his patrons' money during all those months.

 

[zuulan]

I actually detest whole subscribing idea, its just way of milking money from supporters. Devs stretch they development out for years to get more money. and for one game single supporter basically pays for hundreds of dollars. I dont know even AAA game that cost that much most AAA game cap at 70 dollars and usually, they are 30-40 dollars.

Another problem i have with subscribing is that you need to give them your data to make a payment. Much better solution would be cryptocurrencys where you can be anonymous. Luckily there are few devs who allow other kind of payments to access to games.

 

[Hullahopp]

Don't get me the wrong way, I agree with you about people being responsible about their own money. I'm not trying to say down with patreon or anything either. I just think their should be some kind of incentive or reason for them to actively show their work instead of just hypeing. At that point there would be more clarity and people could have a better idea on if they wanted to pledge than just a wild hope. Edit - Bad grammar

I understand your problem, but this is creative work. Inspiration cannot be forced. If you put a gun to a writer's head and order him to work, he might come up with something, but it's unlikely you'll like it.
Patreon site is maintained by the creators' income. A $10 subscriber is worth less to them than a $200,000 a month creator. (And yes, i don't like Patreon.)
I've heard Steam or Itch.io is more correct. You only have to pay once to get future updates.

 

[woody554]

some countries outlaw donations to non-governmental or similar organizations for this exact reason, and require there to be an actual exchange of things. ie. you MUST produce goods or services that are bought by the donations. if you just sit around doing nothing you're committing a fraud and can get pretty heavy time depending on the amount of money stolen from people.

 

[Deleted member 5189987]

Don't forget that many games are still in development and that most developers have a full time job. At least, that's my situation right now. I would love to not need the Patreon support or money, so that I create a game completely for free for you to enjoy. The art for my game is created by an artist who has a realistic art style, and it looks stunning. But that means that he is very expensive.

Of course there are developers who don't do anything but sit on their chair and wait for the money to get on their bank account. But most developers I know are hard working and put their blood, sweat and tears into the game they produce. And those are the ones that deserve all the money in the world.

But I understand your opinion too.

 

[PTSdev]

I'm currently developing a game, but I have decided not to go into early access like many other lewd game devs do. The main reason: My game is fairly complex, releasing it in its current state would just provide an incomplete and jarring experience. For games with a linear plot, early access with Patreon / SubscribeStar support can work well, if the devs are good at managing expectations and deadlines.

The thing I really don't understand is how people are willing to support creators who are incapable of keeping promises. Of course, you can say that it's just a monthly donation to a creator you WANT to support, but personally, I don't see the point in spending money on announcements. I'm currently supporting some Podcast creators and one lewd game dev on Patreon, both offer great content and I just want them to show my appreciation for their work.

Overall, the gaming market has shifted towards microtransactions and F2P models, especially in the mobile sector. But many AAA studios are trying to cash in as well. But it really depends on the game itself whether an mtx based monetization model is sustainable or not.

Subscription based monetization works best when there's consistency.

 

[LewdLewy]

The early access method for games has some quirks that are distinctly different from full retail releases. There are many things that change over the course of a game's development. Content gets cut, stuff gets reworked, and sometimes the whole project is scrapped because it failed coalesce its individual pieces into a sell-able product. All of that happens at game studios that are anywhere from 25 employees to hundreds. Almost no game actually delivers on all of their roadmap. Expecting an unfinished game to retain all of the qualities you like unchanged by development's end is a bad idea.

These small indie games have no real backup when shit hits the fan. Whether they realize the amount of work hours to pay is abysmal (unless they strike it big early on), personal issues (apparently the dev of AOA Academy social anxiety issues were so bad that he dropped a game making about $4k a month), or stuff completely out of everyone's hands like war (sad Ukrainian and Russian dev noises). When indie games go down, they go down in flames. For most cancelled games from AAA studios, the public never even knew the game existed.

To some patrons it feels like there is some level of betrayal or ulterior motive. Which has happened, but most often it is nothing more than standard game industry production woes with no big pockets or other employees to fall back on. The more intimate connection they had to a smaller game and its dev is what makes it hurt more, but nothing in the indie game space is any different from the larger studios, just different in scale.

Obviously there are some problems with bait and switch, milking, and other issues. However, the mentality of never supporting games early on is killing the originality of adult games. Most often, the ones I see that are successful starters have the school setting, incest, MILF, harem tags as the primary content. Liberally sprinkle in some loli and a dev can get away with a hilarious ratio of quality to money earned.

There's always the chance of getting burned, but I think a few dollars lost pales in comparison to the potential of allowing some really interesting games to exist that would otherwise be impossible through traditional funding. I know, I know we're on a pirate site, but you can't steal or play any games if there aren't any devs to make them.

 

[Losersriot]

I'm currently developing a game, but I have decided not to go into early access like many other lewd game devs do.

Male, Female or Multiple ?
Anime, DAZ, HS ?
Real, sci-fi, fantasy ?

 

[Losersriot]

Hello ~ everyone!

You just envie succeful devs. Because you not pay. Is not your business.

 

[kintarodev]

From user's POV:

As already said, nobody is forced to donate to anybody.

Also is not a one click thing, but you have to go through some sort of "payment wall". More than hype-train
i would call it faith.

Once this said, it's also true that devs not always show enough 'profesionalism' in their projects... Again, they are not 'obligated' to... still, in those cases canceling donations is quite a fair thing to do. Ultimately the user is responsible for his own economy and 'investments'.

From Dev's POV:

Even if the devs update their work every three months, and due to story progress or wathever there's not that much content to release at specific times (for example, lack of sex scenes at some point of the story) it doesn't mean they didn't work through all that time. Of course it's always better if there's some weekly log or similar to keep in touch with donors.

Money at those times helps to many possible things: outsourcing chunks of work, pay bills, feed the devs themselves, keep the motivation, etc.

Developing games is one of the most complex creative processes, and thus the lack of regular updates many times. But users may not understand that always.

 

[JoleenStar]

I subscribe to people who release content consistently. I unsubscribe from people who don't.

Money is power.

 

[anne O'nymous]

Money is power.

This would be true if the fact to unsubscribe would change the creator behavior. But I'm almost sure that it's absolutely not what happen.

Money have near to no power on them, because the majority is not doing this for the money. Of course, they are glad if they can earn few bucks, it will help them cover their expenses, but they'll not care more than this. Those who cared already abandoned their game when they discovered that they don't earn US$ 10,000/month since day one. And anyway you probably never subscribed to them.

 

[morphnet]

Hello lads and ladies alike, hope your day has been going well and if it hasn't then i hope it gets better. Anywho, onto the point of this post.
As much as i like services such as patreon or subscribestar, I think there is a problem that has been slowly stewing in the background. I'm not sure what I would specifically call it but im going to go with accountability. Those platforms were intended as a medium for people to support their favorite artists/devs who otherwise lacked a means of publicity. Sorry if that isn't the exact definition of why patreon or subscribestar were made but bear with me here. It was all fine for the beginning as the market was new and had devs that were already passionate and willing to show the result of the support they received.
As time went on and the platforms grew larger and more popular, so did the number of supporters. Now in theory thats awesome and what they deserve for their work, but sadly that isn't how it plays out for the most part. Here's where the problem lies I think, due to the lack of accountability on the devs side with little to no incentive to follow through with what they say, more and more devs old and new are just trying to wind the hype train up as fast as they can and let er rip while they sit back and enjoy the melodies.
I dont know specifically how I would suggest to fix this problem but it's an open subject for any who have an interest in it. In my opinion I think if there was something in the rules/conditions that required some kind of pre-determined minimum amount of content to be shown/released before they actually get their money might be worth considering. Obviously thats a very rough idea that could use fine tuning but its just to get the thought out there. I just feel like more and more creators that i knew and ones i don't are doing this, I mean look at the content/update drought, there's only a few decent games still putting out consistent updates but you can bet your ass the others are still racking in dough . Idk, feel free to criticize, laugh, agree, comment whatever. Cheers, take care everyone!

I think the mistake you are making is getting side tracked from the real issue which is that you wish dev's would put out constant update in a timely manner. Alot of people have made the mistake of blaming patreon and other serivces directly or indirectly. The fact is even when dev's don't use those services and either use one time purchase platforms like steam or go completely free, releasing from their blogspot or website many still don't release timely updates or updates lacking content or small updates after long delays with just bug fixes.

Patreon, subscribestar and others like them are middlemen, they allow people to find people doing things that interest them and allow those people to get support, nothing more and nothing less.

The REAL problem is how to get the games we like/love updated in the time we want, with the content we want and keep it at that pace. The answer is simple, we can't. It sucks and can be frustrating but it's the simple fact. Some people have said that money is power, unfortunately they are wrong...stupidity is power, even if 10 or 100 people pull their pledges there are still 200 people that will continue to support the dev's and so there is no reason for them to change their habits.

I actually detest whole subscribing idea, its just way of milking money from supporters. Devs stretch they development out for years to get more money. and for one game single supporter basically pays for hundreds of dollars. I dont know even AAA game that cost that much most AAA game cap at 70 dollars and usually, they are 30-40 dollars.

Most of that is not true at all. Between the writer, musicians, programmers AND then the indie porn game makers subscriptions work well and the majority of them are not milking anyone. The milking is just highlighted with the indie porn game dev's because of the community. As for AAA games being cheaper, maybe 10 years ago but not these days at all....
If you take companies like paradox you can spend upwards of $200 for their games and alot of the other AAA games support ingame stores and we won't even start on loot boxes.

I understand your problem, but this is creative work. Inspiration cannot be forced. If you put a gun to a writer's head and order him to work, he might come up with something, but it's unlikely you'll like it.

That is the real problem but you are not being realistic, writers have deadlines in almost every field, from news to paperback publishing. Not to mention the fact that the more you do something the better you are supposed to get at it. That means that if someone works with coding for 2 years, you expect that person to be compatent at it at the very least... that means less mistakes and less double checking inputs, freeing up time to "be creative"

There are games on this site that have been out for 4-5 years and they are still putting out small updates, late and after they have managed to hired more people... but none of that is patreons fault or any subscription services fault. It's the dev's fault in almost all the cases. This is also clear when you look at dev's who are on patreon, do have other jobs, have personal issues arise and still manage to released good sized updates on a regular schedule. The problem is not subscriptions or patreon but the dev's that do this.

All that being said it's easy to forget there are still many dev's who put out good games, good updates and act professionally, it just so happens that alot of game people like have dev's that don't and they make the others look bad and they do such a good job at making others look bad it even blows back on companies like patreon and subscribestar....

 

[whizwart]

Lack of deliverables is a problem with the patron model since it started way back when. I would almost view it like buying stock, you may get something, you may get nothing. If you aren't getring what you want, its totally ok to stop paying and (IMHO) let others know that user isn't following through

 

[VIHooligan]

So I just want to clarify a few things that I think people are misunderstanding. By no means am I disagreeing with anyone that at the end of the day it is still up to the user to keep paying or not. Neither do I strictly mean forcing anyone to produce content quicker than they are comfortable with. As some of you have said, being devs yourself, there's a lot going on in life for everyone and it isn't always easy to juggle all the finances. A huge thing is transparency and communication. I bet most of you good devs out there, you the mvp btw, actually talk to your supporters/fans and explain, even simply, how things are going and so on so forth. The whole pre determined requirement for each month doesn't strictly have to be playable content, I do have a general idea of how game development works, I know its not just a non stop content train. It was meant to be a means of forcing more transparency out of devs so that people could have a more educated idea of if they wanted to continue pledging. Something like that wouldn't be harmful to the legit devs that are honest but it would bring to light any of the shitty people that have nothing to show for the last 6 months of money they absorbed in the so called "costs"

 

[JoleenStar]

This would be true if the fact to unsubscribe would change the creator behavior. But I'm almost sure that it's absolutely not what happen.

Money have near to no power on them, because the majority is not doing this for the money. Of course, they are glad if they can earn few bucks, it will help them cover their expenses, but they'll not care more than this. Those who cared already abandoned their game when they discovered that they don't earn US$ 10,000/month since day one. And anyway you probably never subscribed to them.

And that's okay. What is important is that they no longer get MY money.

You can't control what others do, but only what YOU do. If they continue to be a shitty dev, it's no longer my problem if others still support them.

Good devs will always have the most support.

 

[anne O'nymous]

Most of that is not true at all. Between the writer, musicians, programmers AND then the indie porn game makers subscriptions work well and the majority of them are not milking anyone. The milking is just highlighted with the indie porn game dev's because of the community.

And it's mostly highlighted out of self frustration.
I'll not say that no one ever complained about this issue before, but it's only when ICSTOR started to act like a fucking cunt that it really arisen as the generic complain it now is. Before this, a creator could release one update a year, and globally no one would complain. This while now it's almost if a creator isn't accused to milk his patrons if (s)he don't release one week of game content every month ; even when this creator don't even earn enough to pay a beer.

Good devs will always have the most support.

Really ?

Due to your previous comment, and the thread you're saying this, I assume that "good dev" mean "dev that release consistent update regularly enough". Therefore, can you take a better look at the list of

You must be registered to see the links

, and tell me how many of those "good devs" are in the top 100 ; there's some when you look attentively.
And while searching for them, note the number of creators who earn less than US$ 10,000 while still being in the said top 100, over the 5,180 creators in total.
Or note the difference between the US$ 9,411/month earned by Arc (22th), creator of Corrupted Kingdoms, a game mostly updated every two weeks, and the US$ 25,774/month earned by Sad crab (23th), creator of Innocent Witches, a game that nearly have one (generally small) update every year.

The truth is that patrons don't care this much about the regularity of the update, nor about their constancy in regard of the time past waiting. You do, good for you, but you aren't part of the majority.