i neeeed an update man :(
Viewing post in Hero's Harem Guild (NSFW +18) comments
Stop the cap, you're milking your Patreon and you know it. You are currently making around $50,000 a year or $4400 a month from this game alone. Why would you ever finish it? I guarantee you've came to the conclusion that finishing the game faster would destroy your patreon income. 3 years for one (big) update is insane when you consider how quickly you completed the Christmas updates. At least have the humility to admit you are milking it just like DarkCookie and ICSTOR. Tbh though I don't blame you, 4400 a month for doing very minor progress a week sheeesh
I was doing $15,000 a month by posting constant updates (Not even counting itch.io revenue), if I wanted more money I would do that and post infinite content instead, don't you think?
Have you seen the difference between the Christmas update and the prologue? Yeah, that's because I'm constantly improving my content by working every day, seems pretty good for doing "very minor progress a week.", other games have released at almost the same time as HHG and they remain with the literal same quality as of today, years later. (BTW I posted the Christmas update COMPLETELY FREE, not even beyond patreon tiers!)
It takes time, sorry. I hope you understand it once you play it, and I hope you do. It'll also be free. ♥
For both points you are making, I find that they conflict with one another. Apologies if I appear hostile but I am strong in my belief that you are taking advantage of people.
You claim you are making this game completely for free (As with the Christmas update for example), yet you are getting paid for it? It may be free for the regular user to download, but are you not profiting from this game? From a logical standpoint, that would mean the game is not "free". You have many loyal fans backing your project expecting good things to come from it.
In my personal opinion and belief, you are letting these people down with the occasional radio silence of progress updates. $50,000 a year is a LOT of money, my mother is a professional Hair Stylist that has to continuously retake school and destroy her fingers using scissors and makes 2/3rds of that. $180,000 is an absolute KILLING of income. You could possibly hire a small team to help you with progress if you are actually motivated to complete this game, but alas.
I understand developers need some form of income or "spark" to be motivated enough to continue, but it has been THREE YEARS of pledged support by your backers, and Prologue (Just the BEGINNING of the main story, not the whole thing) isn't even close to being finished. (Judging by the Trello page and updates in your server you are a little more than halfway).
Another one of my opinions? You should 100% sell your game when it is finished. I know this goes against your moral code and overall goal, but even a small cost of $5 would be more than enough to supplement your labor. I admire a developer who can boldly claim their games are free, but in this case, this game is 100% not free. Free to play, not free in price.
You deserve your success and your backers for making this game, clearly you touched a bunch of gooners' hearts and it has a pretty decent storyline. My point is would it kill you to be more open to your fans?
Thank you. I like it when I can talk to people like this.
I've said it multiple times that I'm mostly active on Discord all day, every day!
I'm incredibly open with everyone. You can come to Discord and ask for proof or whatever you want and I will answer you without any single problem, I have nothing to hide, and I have lots of content to show.
I'm not showing much on itch.io, etc. because I can understand people might get tired from my posts saying, "Hey! It is STILL developing!" while saying the same things all over again. XD.
That's why I said in my latest post that it'll be the LAST ONE before the update. No other posts; the next one will be the update.
You can ask me anything; you can ask for anything. You don't have to be a patron for that. I even suggest to non-patrons on discord that wants to pledge to please wait for the update before pledging. I can live enough with that I get from Patreon. It is not about the money or anything, as I said, I believe the easiest path would be dropping quick monthly updates with a 2 week test if I wanted to grind money XD.
To be fair, noone is obligated to give him any money. Just take a look at the update history and decide for yourself if this is something you are able/willing to support.
If you decided to do so, fine. If you decided not to, also fine. If you gave someone money without any consideration, then you probably can afford to do so, and or don't deserve to have that money in the first place.
If you did so persistently for a prolonged amount of time expecting things to change, I do not know what to tell you.
Maybe look around and see what's going on in the world. It's not anyone's job to tell you to stop giving them free money. If you were in his position, you probably wouldn't either.
To be fair, I 100% guarantee this game would have been abandoned ages ago if he wasn't making money. Even though he says this is a "free game" doesn't mean it is a free game. All developers need some sort of income, it just so happens his income is ridiculously high for this one game, so why rush it?
I'm generally not one to ever pay for any subscription based service other than power, water and internet, but who am I to tell people what to spend their money on. I'd much rather pay for a game when it's out, but I'm not oblivious to the fact that some of these projects would never even have been started if everything had to be funded that way.
I am glad that some people are careless enough to finance them in my stead, but after a certain point, you can really feel diminishing returns on "throwing a continous stream of money at people in order to motivate them to work".
The exact level of support for this specific project does kind of baffle me a bit, but it happened to find a good niche, delivered a quality product and somehow managed to keep the promise to deliver even more of said quality in suspended animation indefinitely.
It's kinda like the YanDev story, but here there is an actual quality product to look forward to and the person behind it is at least on the surface likable. Again, I don't blame them for taking their time, if you were paid a neat sum continously for doing not much apparent work, would you want it to stop? I sure wouldn't. Yearning for financial security is an integral part of the human condition after all.
Yes, actually I would stop telling people to give me 'free' money if I'm not holding up my end of a deal. Nothing is 'free'. Nobody is giving anyone 'free' money.
I'm not a Patreon sub, never have been. However, in a situation where you're subscribing to someone for a service and that promise(note: not a contract, but a promise) is being broken by not making good on that service provision, even if it's legally completely within your rights to do so, if I'm in a situation where I've provided nobody a service I've been getting paid for for over a year, I'm cancelling not only the ability to subscribe to my Patreon(or whichever platform) and refunding/cancelling current subs. Because, even if you don't or can't believe that people still have integrity, I know I do.
It's not about legal obligation, but moral. Nobody of authority is coming after them. It's just really scummy and I don't encourage that level of lazy behavior.
If you really are convinced that you can maintain that level of integrity in a similar situation, then congrats, you are better than what most people can say about themselves.
I however tend to assume the opposite, and I think that is the more fitting mindset to have in this day and age.
Everybody loves to say this will never be them, until suddenly they are in their position. Very few actually have what it takes to resist corruption.