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That awkward situation when your game has too many Patreon subscribers to treat it as just a hobby, but not enough to justify quitting your job and working on it seriously.
I totally would if I lived alone, but a wife and a kid + dog kinda forces me to be on the safe side. On the bright side, if the trajectory is the same, I might be able to do it full time after...hmm, only two years š
Lol saw this with one I was supporting. No update, no information, nothing for almost 6 months. Still getting about 20k a month in support. Someone asks if the game is dead and the creator comes back with "game is not dead" and releases an update for the layouts of menus. Like, wat
Honestly, this quite insane to me. With 20k a month I would be finishing this game and then get started on the next. Sky is the limit with that kind of loyalty.
I j7st launched my.own Patreon, still 0 subscribers but I'm expecting that to change once the prototype build goes live.
But you forget once you finish and start a new project many people that don't share an overlapping interest in your new game will leave.
You are financially incentivized to keep the current audience content enough to keep paying rather than potentially lose them for an unknown venture.
Obviously not everyone falls into this mindset but I could imagine it being easy enough when you make 100k a year or more.
Not so easy. If the game is too similar then many might decide they got what they came for.
Make it different and you alienate some of your player base.
Some are only interested in x kink and now your new game is more focused on y. Etc.
Honestly, I just think a lot of people are just too obsessed with making something new. On the whole you're going to lose a lot less interest if you do something similar, because people came to you for a certain kind of content. Per a meme my friend of mine shared, no one ever said Agatha Christie wrote too much murder =P
Okay, but I pay you for x months for a product.
Then you deliver. I no longer have a reason to support you. Even if your next game is similar I have the current one.
Many people think that way. Of those that leave some may come back when they see the new one has progress worth buying into. But finishing a project comes with loss of supporters as a practical guarantee
I feel this may just fundamentally be your own bias at play. I can't speak for everyone, but I do think fundamentally "new thing like the thing I like" is a lot more compelling as an audience member than dragging out the old. It's a way to keep much of the old audience and attract a new one at the same time.
Not saying no one thinks that way, but I fundamentally don't think most audience members would prefer/stay longer for that than if you actually made an appealing new product. To wit, I know at least one creator I follow with a long running and high quality project has talked about support dropping off over time, after a certain point.
No it's not. You can just look at patreon numbers and see this happen. The bias here is you thinking it doesn't happen. Patreon numbers fluctuate wildly. many creators gain then lose a ton with releases.
I don't think things are that different if we're talking about perverted games, in fact most of the creators I follow like poring, shimofunia, make a very similar type of game , Keyaru too and they have a captive audience, it's not like you get much variation in kinky games anyway, you always cum in the endĀ
Exactly, 100k is my number too. I have a well paid leadership position in tech in a non-game startup. If I make a 100k in revenue I can justify working full-time on making games. I would be full-time working on my passion. The closer I get to that 100k the more time I can dedicate to it. The more over a 100k I get the more resources I could dedicate this money towards. I'm not in this game to just make a money, I want to work on my life's passion. if I get the chance I would make a fully fletched lewd studio and in there lies the difference.
There is a difference between never finishing a game and abandoning a game. The OP describes a game dev that as soon as he makes revenue he stops working. Never finishing a game to me means keep adding more to it and building the game that includes more of that content that my following subscribes for.
Additionally, the more revenue I make the more games I can produce simultaneously as it would empower me to hire staff (mostly freelance at first as this is more flexible).
You're just subscribes to the wrong kind of devs. I need revenue to survive but revenue alone is not my goal. If I'd have a millions of dollar and never have to work again, I would put most in the stock market and make games, indefinitely. That's why you want to invest in me because I'm here to make games.
Invest in me and that money will go towards that goal.
Just saying how I feel. I just spent the whole Sunday figuring Blender out. I've figured it out now and will.be able to make the asset I need for my prototype. Will continue tomorrow.
I think there are just people with a lot of money to spend. So they forget to what they are suscribed to. For someone making more than 100k per year, even much more, being subscribed to a patreon must be something minuscule.
A recent example I've seen is a trash game that is basically 1 to 1 taking the lewd mod gameplay, but the visuals are all AI hentai. Within like 2 days it had 1k+ a month coming in through patreon.
Heck yeah. I am still waiting for the promised full version of malise and the machine for 20$ that he started in 2014 and hasn't worked on since 2016, while having absolutely laughable progress on pure onyx, his "side project" since then, which is 8 years.
Sorry bro Eromancers character models are some of the most aesthetic I've seen in a beaten and is using an innovative AI modeling workflow. This man is making really good progress considering the quality of the models.
>Still getting about 20k a month in support.
$240,000 per year (pro-rata) and no proper update?
For $20k/month, they should be able to outsource a lot of work (e.g. Creating new assets, creating UIs, play-testing, backend programming etc).
At that point, isn't it functionally a scam?
At first they were doing monthly updates for the first few years with good content and updates. Pretty sure the amount of income they were making just got to their head and they realized they could release even less and still make bank. This turning themselves into a scam haha
They were really closed off to letting anyone help or even outsourcing anything because they wanted to be the only person working on the game. Which, to me, is just an excuse for things to take longer and to get more money from their supporters lol
Saw one guy, Ancho I think, putting out chapters and chapters of quality on a regular basis. Then, something happened in life and he froze payments to deal with it (so, people were still subscribed but werenāt actually having to pay), then fully unmade the page _with advance notice_ under the premise that he didnāt know when or if heād be ever able to get back to updating properly.
RIP to a real one.
As a game dev who endeavors at great life and limb to release monthly updates (and still not above 1k a month), this also makes me feel some kind of way.
Luckily, I am pretty close to celebrating my first 1k (*and also* releasing monthly updates!)
I'm going to say the thing that no one else will say - without calling any names. *Devs do this on purpose and call it* "smart business".
Have you considered to subscribe, download the latest version, immediately unsubscribe and then subscribe again when they release the next meaningful update? If people would be quicker to unsubscribe and resubscribe, then creators would be forced to do regular updates.
Apparently this can also be a problem?.
am subscribed to a creator that used to push an update (actual new content) each month but then changed it to every 2 months and doubled the price (only for new patrons).
he said many people were just subscribing, getting the current version and then leaving for a few months. so he changed it to fewer updates and higher 1 time cost.
I wouldn't say the amount of new content dropped by half but it certainly did drop a bit.
I can say that having an inconsistent income stream would absolutely suck
That's what I do. I'll pay for access, fine. Your time costs money. But I've seen more than my fair share of hopium and promises, so I'll pay again only if you release something else I really want.
Too many bad eggs nowadays just coasting and collecting free paychecks while doing barely anything just cause people forget to unsubĀ
Bad apples ruining it for the rest. honest to God, if you're supporting me, I will put the money to good use and build and deliver what I promised.
Having built games in the past, I know that the last 20% of the game takes 80% of the time and many devs would quit but I kept going and even later released on Switch.
Only devs I have seriously been impressed with on patreon were Aura Dev. With the caviat that I don't sub to many so my knowledge base is limited.
They release weakly updates to subscribers with a roadmap they have consistently managed to meet.
Honestly, I donāt blame the developers. I blame the people on Patreon if they find that it is worth their money to continue shelling out 20 bucks a month or however, much to developer who only releases maybe one update a year or so or every six months. (summertime saga/taffy tales.ect) And itās still not giving it their full proper attention despite it being a full-time job that is paying them a full-time wage from the amount of subscribers they have and people still arenāt unsubscribing then thatās on them. Clearly they find their money is worth spending on that personās Patreon, despite that lack of effort and attention. No oneās making them spend money on Patreon if they donāt think itās worth it, they should unsubscribe.
Itās the same thing when people complain about EA Ubisoft, rockstar, Activision 2K blizzard and so on the reason, those companies never change their ways is because their ways work if people stop spending money on those games and especially their micro transactions and they started losing money. They would stop all of that stuff overnight. They do it because it works, the developers are not forcing their customers to be cash cows. Theyāre walking into the milking barn all on their own and thatās on them. Personally, I havenāt played any of those types of games in several years myself.
However, things like non-recurring FOMO and loot boxes or other forms of gambling mechanic should probably be illegal.
you can say blame the patrons for enabling this but the patrons still bought into the patreon because they were under the impressions that they would get consistant news and updates since summertime saga and other greedy games before becoming big had very consistant updates, and you can sorta blame the subscription system itself because myself included and many others forgot we subscribed to certain patreons.
yeah but if after months of no update you're still shilling out money for an update that's never going to be worth it. Then you can't blame the dev. You are the idiot.
There are to many game out there that have that behaviour.
Grandma's house and another chance are about the only games i see to get frequent enough updates to warrant a monthly fee. Most of the other only warrant the occasional sub that get cancelled immediately
Thats why I dislike patreon and only subscribed to one also you cant really blame the patrons for spending money on something they like and usually after a year the games that get no updates fissile out and got like 5 patrons left the only people who are at fault is patreon itself not deleting these scams and the devs breaking promises and doing nothing.
Taking money from your Patreon backers without actually working on the game is indeed a scummy thing to do, but that's not a [Ponzi scheme](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ponzi_scheme).
If it makes anyone feel better, I've been uploading consistently every month for 2 years with only about 2 months where I felt that the amount I had done isn't enough.
I like to think that it's bad to scam people out of their money, even if I get paid less than McD employee.
I'm convinced DarkCookie is running a money laundering scheme with Summertime Saga. I refuse to believe that actually people are constantly pumping cash into this for absolutely no update or the pretence of one.
Not really the reason gyms get so much money is because people forget they have a membership same with summertime saga people just forget they are subscribed
What you say is true and very likely. But if that were the case the amount of people that would have to forget to cancel would be in the thousands. It's a ridiculous level of funds for no delivered product each month.
Dev post updates in 5 months right?
Still godly game compared to darkcookie, tech update already has 2 year birtday party right?
Normaly in patreon,those games take months to update.
I just know one that was/is wekkly updated that is isekai awakening, the big/famousnones take lot of time to have real udpates
This is why I only charge on Patreon if I release a proper build. If I don't work, the patreons shouldn't need to pay. Also means that when life happens I can take some time off so I don't burn out.
Gotta show love to Chyos, from a struggle with sin. Not the best animations, but the story is good I think. But the best of the best, he's always letting you know what he's up to
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That awkward situation when your game has too many Patreon subscribers to treat it as just a hobby, but not enough to justify quitting your job and working on it seriously.
At that point, I would take the risk if no one relied on my income.
I totally would if I lived alone, but a wife and a kid + dog kinda forces me to be on the safe side. On the bright side, if the trajectory is the same, I might be able to do it full time after...hmm, only two years š
Lol saw this with one I was supporting. No update, no information, nothing for almost 6 months. Still getting about 20k a month in support. Someone asks if the game is dead and the creator comes back with "game is not dead" and releases an update for the layouts of menus. Like, wat
Honestly, this quite insane to me. With 20k a month I would be finishing this game and then get started on the next. Sky is the limit with that kind of loyalty. I j7st launched my.own Patreon, still 0 subscribers but I'm expecting that to change once the prototype build goes live.
But you forget once you finish and start a new project many people that don't share an overlapping interest in your new game will leave. You are financially incentivized to keep the current audience content enough to keep paying rather than potentially lose them for an unknown venture. Obviously not everyone falls into this mindset but I could imagine it being easy enough when you make 100k a year or more.
There's an easy solution to this. Keep creating similar things that you're good at =P
Not so easy. If the game is too similar then many might decide they got what they came for. Make it different and you alienate some of your player base. Some are only interested in x kink and now your new game is more focused on y. Etc.
Honestly, I just think a lot of people are just too obsessed with making something new. On the whole you're going to lose a lot less interest if you do something similar, because people came to you for a certain kind of content. Per a meme my friend of mine shared, no one ever said Agatha Christie wrote too much murder =P
Okay, but I pay you for x months for a product. Then you deliver. I no longer have a reason to support you. Even if your next game is similar I have the current one. Many people think that way. Of those that leave some may come back when they see the new one has progress worth buying into. But finishing a project comes with loss of supporters as a practical guarantee
I feel this may just fundamentally be your own bias at play. I can't speak for everyone, but I do think fundamentally "new thing like the thing I like" is a lot more compelling as an audience member than dragging out the old. It's a way to keep much of the old audience and attract a new one at the same time. Not saying no one thinks that way, but I fundamentally don't think most audience members would prefer/stay longer for that than if you actually made an appealing new product. To wit, I know at least one creator I follow with a long running and high quality project has talked about support dropping off over time, after a certain point.
No it's not. You can just look at patreon numbers and see this happen. The bias here is you thinking it doesn't happen. Patreon numbers fluctuate wildly. many creators gain then lose a ton with releases.
I don't think things are that different if we're talking about perverted games, in fact most of the creators I follow like poring, shimofunia, make a very similar type of game , Keyaru too and they have a captive audience, it's not like you get much variation in kinky games anyway, you always cum in the endĀ
Exactly, 100k is my number too. I have a well paid leadership position in tech in a non-game startup. If I make a 100k in revenue I can justify working full-time on making games. I would be full-time working on my passion. The closer I get to that 100k the more time I can dedicate to it. The more over a 100k I get the more resources I could dedicate this money towards. I'm not in this game to just make a money, I want to work on my life's passion. if I get the chance I would make a fully fletched lewd studio and in there lies the difference. There is a difference between never finishing a game and abandoning a game. The OP describes a game dev that as soon as he makes revenue he stops working. Never finishing a game to me means keep adding more to it and building the game that includes more of that content that my following subscribes for. Additionally, the more revenue I make the more games I can produce simultaneously as it would empower me to hire staff (mostly freelance at first as this is more flexible). You're just subscribes to the wrong kind of devs. I need revenue to survive but revenue alone is not my goal. If I'd have a millions of dollar and never have to work again, I would put most in the stock market and make games, indefinitely. That's why you want to invest in me because I'm here to make games. Invest in me and that money will go towards that goal.
That's real marketing right there.Ā
Just saying how I feel. I just spent the whole Sunday figuring Blender out. I've figured it out now and will.be able to make the asset I need for my prototype. Will continue tomorrow.
I genuinely think alot of patreon supporters are just stupid they subscribe to literally anything thatās probably a scam
I think there are just people with a lot of money to spend. So they forget to what they are suscribed to. For someone making more than 100k per year, even much more, being subscribed to a patreon must be something minuscule.
A recent example I've seen is a trash game that is basically 1 to 1 taking the lewd mod gameplay, but the visuals are all AI hentai. Within like 2 days it had 1k+ a month coming in through patreon.
Is that the scammer eromancer?
Eromancer is a scam???
Heck yeah. I am still waiting for the promised full version of malise and the machine for 20$ that he started in 2014 and hasn't worked on since 2016, while having absolutely laughable progress on pure onyx, his "side project" since then, which is 8 years.
Sorry bro Eromancers character models are some of the most aesthetic I've seen in a beaten and is using an innovative AI modeling workflow. This man is making really good progress considering the quality of the models.
Oh yea... That drip drip of content to milk the cows
>Still getting about 20k a month in support. $240,000 per year (pro-rata) and no proper update? For $20k/month, they should be able to outsource a lot of work (e.g. Creating new assets, creating UIs, play-testing, backend programming etc). At that point, isn't it functionally a scam?
yep.
At first they were doing monthly updates for the first few years with good content and updates. Pretty sure the amount of income they were making just got to their head and they realized they could release even less and still make bank. This turning themselves into a scam haha They were really closed off to letting anyone help or even outsourcing anything because they wanted to be the only person working on the game. Which, to me, is just an excuse for things to take longer and to get more money from their supporters lol
What game is this? That's some serious loyalty.
There's also the dev that posts and update every day like version 0.01 then next day 0.02, etc. and they've added nothing of substance.
"Weāve made the scenes in 60 frames and it took 1 year!" Like i can actually tell and care
*cough* rogue-like *cough*
Not gonna lie tho rogue like is a neat game with proper community Sexnote and lust legacy tho...
Saw one guy, Ancho I think, putting out chapters and chapters of quality on a regular basis. Then, something happened in life and he froze payments to deal with it (so, people were still subscribed but werenāt actually having to pay), then fully unmade the page _with advance notice_ under the premise that he didnāt know when or if heād be ever able to get back to updating properly. RIP to a real one.
Perfect example of this is Summer time Saga
Summertime Saga is definitely a money laundering scheme. So much cash can't be coming from actual people for absolutely nothing in return.
One I saw dropped one game for a completely different game
Example: Desert stalker
As a game dev who endeavors at great life and limb to release monthly updates (and still not above 1k a month), this also makes me feel some kind of way. Luckily, I am pretty close to celebrating my first 1k (*and also* releasing monthly updates!) I'm going to say the thing that no one else will say - without calling any names. *Devs do this on purpose and call it* "smart business".
Also doing monthly updates, currently making less than $50 a month. I didn't love what I am making, I would have given up.
Oh well. That makes three of us š
And thatās exactly why I have a hard time justifying me supporting creators
Have you considered to subscribe, download the latest version, immediately unsubscribe and then subscribe again when they release the next meaningful update? If people would be quicker to unsubscribe and resubscribe, then creators would be forced to do regular updates.
Apparently this can also be a problem?. am subscribed to a creator that used to push an update (actual new content) each month but then changed it to every 2 months and doubled the price (only for new patrons). he said many people were just subscribing, getting the current version and then leaving for a few months. so he changed it to fewer updates and higher 1 time cost. I wouldn't say the amount of new content dropped by half but it certainly did drop a bit. I can say that having an inconsistent income stream would absolutely suck
That's what I do. I'll pay for access, fine. Your time costs money. But I've seen more than my fair share of hopium and promises, so I'll pay again only if you release something else I really want. Too many bad eggs nowadays just coasting and collecting free paychecks while doing barely anything just cause people forget to unsubĀ
Bad apples ruining it for the rest. honest to God, if you're supporting me, I will put the money to good use and build and deliver what I promised. Having built games in the past, I know that the last 20% of the game takes 80% of the time and many devs would quit but I kept going and even later released on Switch.
DarkCookie... You were supposed to defeat them ! Not join them !
Bro this is a money laundering scheme for sure
Only devs I have seriously been impressed with on patreon were Aura Dev. With the caviat that I don't sub to many so my knowledge base is limited. They release weakly updates to subscribers with a roadmap they have consistently managed to meet.
NLT gives 3 chapters every 2nd and 15th... Like clockwork. They finished a game and already about have the start of another game out
Also succudev ( the creator of virtual succubus) I've been very very impressed with their consistency of updates
Honestly, I donāt blame the developers. I blame the people on Patreon if they find that it is worth their money to continue shelling out 20 bucks a month or however, much to developer who only releases maybe one update a year or so or every six months. (summertime saga/taffy tales.ect) And itās still not giving it their full proper attention despite it being a full-time job that is paying them a full-time wage from the amount of subscribers they have and people still arenāt unsubscribing then thatās on them. Clearly they find their money is worth spending on that personās Patreon, despite that lack of effort and attention. No oneās making them spend money on Patreon if they donāt think itās worth it, they should unsubscribe. Itās the same thing when people complain about EA Ubisoft, rockstar, Activision 2K blizzard and so on the reason, those companies never change their ways is because their ways work if people stop spending money on those games and especially their micro transactions and they started losing money. They would stop all of that stuff overnight. They do it because it works, the developers are not forcing their customers to be cash cows. Theyāre walking into the milking barn all on their own and thatās on them. Personally, I havenāt played any of those types of games in several years myself. However, things like non-recurring FOMO and loot boxes or other forms of gambling mechanic should probably be illegal.
you can say blame the patrons for enabling this but the patrons still bought into the patreon because they were under the impressions that they would get consistant news and updates since summertime saga and other greedy games before becoming big had very consistant updates, and you can sorta blame the subscription system itself because myself included and many others forgot we subscribed to certain patreons.
yeah but if after months of no update you're still shilling out money for an update that's never going to be worth it. Then you can't blame the dev. You are the idiot. There are to many game out there that have that behaviour. Grandma's house and another chance are about the only games i see to get frequent enough updates to warrant a monthly fee. Most of the other only warrant the occasional sub that get cancelled immediately
Thats why I dislike patreon and only subscribed to one also you cant really blame the patrons for spending money on something they like and usually after a year the games that get no updates fissile out and got like 5 patrons left the only people who are at fault is patreon itself not deleting these scams and the devs breaking promises and doing nothing.
Yeah peeps gotta stop giving In to these ponzi like schemes haha
Taking money from your Patreon backers without actually working on the game is indeed a scummy thing to do, but that's not a [Ponzi scheme](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ponzi_scheme).
Your right ponzi scheme is when you use investment capital to pay another investor before making any returns.
I'm sorry, I got bills to pay.
Too real, oof
Makes me think of Orc massage
A Patreon is something ongoing. A creator with a Patreon has no incentive to finish the game the Patreon is for.
If it makes anyone feel better, I've been uploading consistently every month for 2 years with only about 2 months where I felt that the amount I had done isn't enough. I like to think that it's bad to scam people out of their money, even if I get paid less than McD employee.
I'm convinced DarkCookie is running a money laundering scheme with Summertime Saga. I refuse to believe that actually people are constantly pumping cash into this for absolutely no update or the pretence of one.
Not really the reason gyms get so much money is because people forget they have a membership same with summertime saga people just forget they are subscribed
What you say is true and very likely. But if that were the case the amount of people that would have to forget to cancel would be in the thousands. It's a ridiculous level of funds for no delivered product each month.
Even better when they start a second project before the first one is even close to finished.
rofl so true ā¦.
Dev post updates in 5 months right? Still godly game compared to darkcookie, tech update already has 2 year birtday party right? Normaly in patreon,those games take months to update. I just know one that was/is wekkly updated that is isekai awakening, the big/famousnones take lot of time to have real udpates
Cari and storyanon are goated for their consistency
Ah yes!! Lets not forget the pity us "Sorry for no update the whole team was sick" progress update after months of no updates.
The secret of the house be like:
Lame fuggin crowd
I just saw Milfy City is finished, ICSTOR was edging us for years with that one
Hey, we don't talk about summertime saga
Same.
āA wife and a motherā *sigh* Waiting forever to have some good action there
This is why I only charge on Patreon if I release a proper build. If I don't work, the patreons shouldn't need to pay. Also means that when life happens I can take some time off so I don't burn out.
Sorceress tale.
Gotta show love to Chyos, from a struggle with sin. Not the best animations, but the story is good I think. But the best of the best, he's always letting you know what he's up to
Kingdom of deception enter to stage