Deleted 20 days ago
It is indeed lots of work, but if people supported the lad on Patreon with actual money for more than a year (while he knew it already by then) gives them a right to be angry. They wasted their own money into someone that was intentionally misleading them. He should have made that message straight away when he decided , so people actually had time to consider whether they wanted to continue to support his work or not. Not the other way round...., so a bad call from this specific creator, though indeed some have a real bad attitude here by the way they are reacting to this response (angry ones)
Obviously it is a gamble, but the chap knew for a year as he wrote that he was going to cancel it and cherish a new approach.... and in my book that is some sort of fraud as he kept misleading people for a year.
I got many projects myself and some lead to nothing and some may lead to something, however transparency to your backers is key.
Whether it is a side job (as most have real jobs), by opening a patreon page, you do create some commitment yourself too to your peers.
Depression or life schedules in general can really make things hard. He might well have tried really hard to make it work and just couldn't finally giving up. As someone with a youtube channel for 16 years who didn't post anything for the first time forever due to depression, but people still gave me money, that's back pay for the entire catalog of work I created. This isn't some massive corporation making these promises, this is an nobody like you and me, putting in tons of work and deserves to get paid for the effort put in to entertain us. As much as people might not want the novel he will almost certainly be giving out the novel as a reward to paying customers. The more support the person gets the more likely they are to consider returning to the AVN format after the story is finally completed or allowing someone else to put it into AVN format. I already got a lot of entertainment out of the really hard work and talent done. That alone deserves to be paid.
If a giant corporation did this, sure be pissed and raise hell. The amazing thing about AVNS is completely nobodies can make amazing CGI movie quality work with just one person as a side project. Sadly nobodies have everyday nobody problems just like the rest of us.
I do understand your side of transparency but as a friend of a disabled artist, the person is probably beating themselves up and feeling like a complete failure even more than any angry ex-fan which wont do a damned thing to make the AVN actually ever happen. Support works much better than abuse. I view bascially all of patreon as a form of encouragement to artists to do more of their work I enjoy, not a bound contract as an exchange that you'd BETTER GIVE ME! Patreon is a donation to encourage nobody creators. Nobody creators with nobody problems. If you think of it less like a purchase and more like tipping which is what it really is, its a lot more acceptable. I will still go back and read this through every few years, its something created and permanent. Whether its in a completed form has nothing to do with the work that has gone into it so far.
He stopped working on the game once he got a fulltime job, ghosted everybody for a year and turned the AVN into a novel last year and removed the harem and the smut. It isn't a single book, he said it's multiple books with no time table at all when the first one may be released
Also, further down, he already said he's never coming back to the game. In his patreon post he said he was embarrassed that people called him a smut writer
tldr: Author is busy with work and tired of people calling him a smut writer so he took the name recognition of his popular AVN and is turning it into a lame fantasy novel for normies.
support it if you want, I'm sure as hell not lol
No. Not posting on YT for a year due to depression, with a massive back catalogue, leaving the channel up, and returning, without cutting and running, is NOT the same as getting cold feet because you naively went in to a sexualised commercial project, and then could not hack the flack, so DID cut and run, but made sure NOT to tell anyone for over a year, whilst still collecting money for WORK YOU WERE NOT DOING.
Two totally different things, sorry.
One is relatively harmless in the greater scheme of things, if you posted things for 14 or 15, or those 16 years, and just had to take a break due to mental health issues.... then even the small donations you made whilst absent, is likely not even close to recompense for the volume of work over that decade and half, not unless you only posted one or two videos a year.
The other, is deliberately deceptive, to try to milk as much money as one can from a dead project, whose fate has already been decided. The ETHICAL thing to do, would be SHUT DOWN all donation vectors, BEFORE even announcing the change, and end to the project, the VERY MOMENT you decided to quit. THEN inform everyone what was happening, apologise, then say WHY you chose as you did.
I did not buy this game, or financially contribute in ANY WAY, I am only here because each time I download a NEW game, this one is the top of the banner among recommended games.... which it SHOULD NOT be, given the situation (all those people who Rated this game, need to CHANGE their rating to no star imho). BUT... I can VERY VERY much sympathise with those people who DID invest in this, and had their contributions taken advantage of for a year, even knowing full well this game was now vaporwear.
Unethical, amoral business practices, are just that, even for a LONE CREATOR, working on an AMATEUR game. If it is a product or project, and you are taking money from investors, TRANSPARENCY is CRITICAL. In fact, in at least a couple of Jurisdictions I know, if it COULD BE PROVEN by records, this is what the Dev did, cut and run, but keep taking money for a dead project for a year thereafter, without informing his financial backers, it WOULD INDEED BE CRIMINAL FRAUD.
As much as I normally agree with the pettiness of internet outrage, in this instance, YOU sir, are the one who is out of step with ethics and morality. Trying to justify unethical, and potentially criminal, happenings, is not a good look, and you are likely no going to convince the victims they are wrong to be upset. Because THEY ARE NOT.