I found your game through following another game on a pirate website, to answer your question from another place, people use pirate sites even for free games because it gets the word out, not everyone will come back to the dev, but those who love the game tend to! My financials mean I can only support so many devs and I prefer to make that decision with as much information as possible, so I tend to find the games I play on the pirate sites and then visit their (usually Patreon) pages of the games I love. The Elven Paladin is very cute and made me laugh, and has some great punishments that I thoroughly enjoyed! (though I still haven't managed to get all of the memories) I hope to see another great game from you in the future (possibly with some harsher punishment options?)!
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I forgot to mention a few important reasons people use pirate sites: mods, walkthroughs, tech support, and games that are otherwise unavailable commonly due to language, credit card, or censorship issues. Mods in particular have turned games I would have hated into great experiences by (reducing grind, opening different paths, and avoiding turnoff material). Some parts of the community are toxic entitled assholes, but most are just trying to enjoy the games they love and share them with as many people as they can.
I can understand most of these things I suppose. I mean I am a proponent of once I have the game, I should be allowed to play it how I want, modding and such, difficulty level and otherwise. The ones that just gut the game for spank material are the only ones that are kind of insulting. My only real complaint is that I miss out on the community. I want to hear what people think, good or bad. I want to know the characters they liked, what aspects there should be more or less of. I want to respond and talk to people. I can't do that if I don't even know where my game is.
But these are all just quibbles. There's nothing I can really do about it and I am incredibly appreciative of who's already here and the few places I posted it myself. It's not going to stop me from moving forward or make me put up walls to stop people from doing it. I just thought if the game was free in a place that was easily accessible, in a few places, everyone that shares this kind of interest could come together in these few places and we get a little community thing going.
But again. Quibbles. It's an "ah well" moment. It's sort of ironic to ramble about this at this time of year, because it really just makes me thankful for what I do have, and like this page says, I'm thankful for everyone checking this silly game out and just having a good time with it. It really makes my day.