Thank you for this. After hearing/seeing all the flack about the freemium/premium associated costs, this has sealed the deal for me. It's not at all worth even playing through the free/prologue pieces at this point, in my opinion. I'd rather not get to know a story/lore/characters if it's just going to nickel/dime me later.
I could bring myself to agree about the intentions, perhaps, being good at one point. But at a certain point, I think that went away, and the greed kicked in. I know more than a handful of small/single (or even three-person) indie devs who haven't had such successful kickstarters, haven't had such a high number of downloads and/or sales, and/or haven't even had as much merch (if any at all) - and yet those devs haven't adopted the freemium model, and are doing just fine making their game/s and are even keeping the promises they've made (even if they take time).
I'm 100% in agreement about it being much better to pay $30-$35 for a full game than the microtransaction/freemium (greed) model. Honestly, I'm even okay with paying that for a mobile game/version, if it was all of it/complete (and didn't still have microtransactions). I'd even be okay with pay more than that for a PC version (also complete, no microtransactions). But there's neither of those options available with this game/company.
Any one of these factors are a red flag, or at least rub me the wrong way. Widely successful kickstarter (more than just funded), tons of downloads, tons of purchases made, tons of moderately-fairly-over -priced merch, unkept promises from the kickstarter, some fulfilled kickstarter promises that were given to non-kickstarter supporters first (or simultaneously), costs/premium costs already in the prologue, advertising/stating/promoting all day/everywhere as "free" despite only some of the prologue being free, premium costs for the rest of the game/storyline. Not just this, but the "nsfw" content that's locked behind a paywall is PG-13, amounting to a booty shot/teasing at most. And if you calculate how much it would be to unlock all the content - it's $500+.
Then there's the operations/actions of the company that have nothing to do with the game - absolute rudeness to fans and customers, earning strikes against (long-time/hard-earned) youtubers who were doing letsplay videos & (legit) promoting the game (not just passive playing, but were legitimately telling people to go buy/play), some of which resulted in their entire channel getting deleted (a consolation offered to one of them was a keychain from their merch). They also begged/asked for more money while dangling/threatening a lack of development for stories/characters that were assured per their campaign and unrelated/outside promises.
Further still, they currently keep pushing the "we're a mobile company, now" or "many of the people on the team weren't around then" or whatever other agenda/excuse they have for why they're not held to the original promises, subsequent promises, and/or even just reasonable price-structure, etc. This is absolutely abhorrent, and only solidifies the current team's unprofessionalism, unappreciation/disrespect, and greed. Just because the current team is not the one that assured $2/route instead of per chapter doesn't mean that they're incapable of making good on that price-structure. It's essentially the most expensive game to exist at this point, let alone the fact that it's a mobile game? AYKM? And now they're (again) further pushing their mobile game on a PC game platform? It's insulting and almost laughable, since they'll never make a PC game. Even more - they're literally just advertising their in-game stories for their Fictif app on their page - so no game from those will ever be for sale, here, never be on PC, and all are purchased within their app.
So, any one of these factors is a strike, in my book. Let alone all of these factors together? Many of these tactics are greedy, predatory, and absolutely and incredibly hypocritical for an dev company, let alone an 'indie' one. And this combination of factors just compounds upon itself. It legit does the opposite of intention and makes it so I not only don't want to play any game from this company, but I also don't want to support anything that comes from this company. Which is really unfortunate, as an avid gamer and avid indie gamer/supporter/enthusiast.