If you want more people to play, this should be the first thing you do. Every top game on patreon with a male protag is a white guy for a reason, as its almost the entire playerbase for adult games
Here's where I'm coming from. This is just to explain and I see where you're coming from and you have a point.
If I were to do that not only would I have to come out of pocket for all the changes, but that would mean I would have to use my whole budget on it which is about 2-3 months' worth of content (My game already has over 20+ scenes meaning over 100+ CGs made. ). So I would pay for 90% of that out of pocket AND after I'm done my players who have supported me won't get new scenes but their skin is different. Then I have to hope that people flood to support the game when I give the new update which is (After 2-3 months) you can have lighter skin. No new offspring, no new scenes, no new boss fights (They give sex scenes normally), no new alternate forms, no poll scenes that have been promised.
You're right, most Popular adult games have white males, but the top is only 0.001% of the cases. There are tons that fail with white protags. And If I were to invest that much on a change that would have to increase what patreon/Itch.io/ko-fi makes me by almost a 1000% (no joke, I invest and love my players and this game that much. ALL the money goes on the game) in a month to break even from the change, it straight-up might get canceled. So what I'm saying is that, if it's a change people really want then they tell me and vote with their wallets So that I can weave it into other changes and updates. I promise I will do it and show the receipts to show that every dime plus a few of my own has gone to what they want.
The top 0.1% are the only ones making any money doing this. Its kind of baffling it wasn't the default. Also unless your artist is scamming you it should be much much quicker and cheaper to add it as an option. Its just recoloring a single layer. Should be noted the longer you wait the less viable it will be, eventually locking you out from the wider audience
That's what I'm saying, The low percentage shows that that effort it would take to do that doesn't guarantee anything. So why not have people who really wanted support the decision? Hell, if an artist wants to make edits of my stuff with lighter skin in their own time I'll put it in the game as an option no cost. It's just one layer right? Shouldn't take much time and apparently it would massively increase their enjoyment of the game according to your statistics.
I'm a technician IRL and if I do any work outside of a few courtesy things I charge. It might not be full price but I do charge and I won't blame any professional from having the same standards. That's how professionals work, some are bit more charitable than others but that's an exception not the rule
Also it's not baffling about the skin choice, it what I picked. Again, If people want it changed that fine but they have to show me a tangible way. I don't go off hearsay, as a solo dev I have my roadmap that I stick to with little deviation unless it shows an immediate return on investment, which is not proven by skin tone alone.
If the game fails because of not having the defaul skin tone being lighter, then it deserves to fail and I'll just go to the drawing board again. But I promise you and I'm not saying this to be condescending for anything, your proof is anecdotal at best. Summertime saga isn't super popular because of the way to make character looks, people meme at how silly he looks. It's because of its dynamic gameplay and CG's.
Give me the .psd, or whatever program they use and I will. Its literally not that hard. I guess that assuming the artist actually has proper layering setup, but if you are paying someone they probably should.
You mention Summertime Saga, but thats one game. One. What about the rest of the top 50? How many black male MCs? None. How about top 100? The same. The literal highest I know of, and if anyone knows one higher, please tell me, is ranked 417, and their most common critique is just that. The only other one I can think of, and its a stretch considering they've always said its someone tanned and not black is Taifun Raiders. And they have dropped almost 1 thousand, again, 1k patreons since the change from their last game with a white skin guy to their recent game, despite everything else being objectively better.
It's just supply and demand
What I'm saying is, and this is give me my last reply to this, there is zero proof is purely off of skin color alone. Just because there is none does not mean that's the reason, Correlation does not equal causation.
It's crazy to me how you bank all this on that. When the most likely it's just 99% of those people making games has thay skin color so they make characters that look like them and that's fine, to say supply and demand off of one factor when there's thousands that go into those games being popular is not proven.
So to end this, I will use whatever means I deem appropriate to see if I will do it with the game I'm spending my time making. If one visual aspect causes the game to not be as successful as it could be and magically would have gotten a hundred times more support because of it, That's fine I'll live with that. People can play the thousands of Pokémon games with skin appropriate main characters.
I hope you have a good day.