Like others have said already, I and most likely the majority of people in this thread aren't here because we smelled a dead horse we could put our sticks to work at, but because at some point we were excited about this game.
BD was transparent, communicative and put out a lot of updates consistently. The story was never a literary wonder, but it was decent and had (at least for me) enough meat on it with things like Ethans' past, and how it was intertwined with that of the people he met in the beginning, to be more interesting than just filler between sex scenes.
I am genuinely convinced, that BD really just dabbled a little as a hobby, was overwhelmed by the success and that combined with personal issues he had was the starting step to what we have now.
I wrote it before, some time ago - I kept supporting him for quite some time - devs should be able to get sick or have a vacation without losing money, especially if they do what we want and take the risk of doing so full time.
BUT. If you do it full time, it stops being a hobby, if you take the money, you start having certain obligations - even if it's not a traditional job and no one can force you to do X amount of work in Y amount of time.
One reason why I never entertained the idea of taking money for my steam mods when Steam introduced that idea. I didn't want to feel like I owed my time to someone, it would have stopped being a relaxing hobby.
Creative people often seem more prone to mental issues. Everyone can have them and everyone reacts differently to them. So pointing and saying that ABC handled it better doesn't help in any capacity.
BUT even though he paused pledges a lot in the beginning (a reason why a lot of people were very sympathetic in the beginning), I was paying him sick leave for more than a year. At some point, you have to be able to put yourself together.
I can't just sit here for two years telling my employer 'But I'm trying' without any result, just for then giving him an update with the info that the stuff delaying it for those two years will come later, and this was ready for 1.5 years already.
I don't know if BD is still legit, if this is all the result of some real mental ISSUES, or if he learned somewhere during the last two years that he can have the same money with just writing prose (excuses) for the most part.
On a personal level, I don't wish him any ill and am mostly disappointed. But then we have WVM and him handling this thing.
I'm disappointed in him and not only for his most prominent actions in the last two years, but due to me stepping back and the game stepping back so to say I can see a lot of stuff clearer now, that already itched me before, but I was too close to to really notice/give full weight to.
Most of them related to his self proclaimed Contrarianism, also called stupidity (see above
Fun Shaundi )
A duck face here or there? OK - but they got more the more people mentioned that they weren't their favorite expression.
I'm more into petite girls and with every update a lot of the LIs - regardless of their frame in the beginning - started to 'grow'.
Clients were initially supposed to be ways to give Patrons something to influence that occurred once and then vanished in the shadows - but now they all bleed into the main story. The first 2 hands full of girls felt like they had a personality and story, then we got rainbow colors and girls we didn't know running naked through our house ...
While every excuse we get in itself is something I could understand - in sum, they show you something smelly is going on there.
There was a list posted sometime back, can't find it, but someone else might have a link?
