I am a big AVN enthusiast and i agree with 100% of what your saying ... To itch i say, your losing alot of money. .. to the dev i say, well... your my hero, you stay you.
It's only common sense, or lack of it, on itch and the payment processors part. Economical theory says that, if there's demand for a product, someone will offer it. Right now there are three of big platforms that allow AVNs (with more or less restrictions): Steam, Patreon, and Subscribestar. So itch renouncing voluntarily to that market, after they stated on Twitter that they would support them, is only giving money to their rivals.
AVNs won't disappear. For most devs, doing this is a passion project that costs us a lot of money. If we are lucky, we can compensate it with monetization, but I guess that less than 5% of devs can make a living out of it. So if we invest our money and our time doing something we love, we won't stop doing it because one platform, like itch, doesn't like it. We will go to the platforms that allow it and work there.
In my case, I decided to continue publishing the game here for free because I didn't want to punish the players who don't want or can't subscribe to Patreon/SS. For this update, I wanted to do an SFW version to be able to monetize it on itch. It hasn't been as well received as I hoped (only 10 purchases when the last time Itch allowed me to monetize the NSFW version I sold 142 games) but I think it's a visibility thing. Most AVN players don't look for games in the general section. I will continue to publish it here (Early access SFW and when it becomes free, the NSFW version) for a couple of updates and see if it's worth the extra work. If not, I will return to publish only the NSFW version.
Is there a way to search for games on Patreon? I do not know of any. I think on Subscribestar you can search for similar accounts.
And Steam does not count in my book, because your product has to be near finished. They have quality standards on top of content restrictions.
You cannot buy development version games anywhere that I know of, except on itch.
On Patreon and Subscribestar you only get temporary access to a snapshot. You do not "buy" the game there, only whatever bonus the developer might give you. Same for other "donation" sites that enable devs to get money somehow.
The reason why people "sell" games on patreon/subscribestar is as you said. There is a market for that service. And that service is buying indie adult games.
(Oh, and the example above with the 50% or so was for real life porn. That is what those cam girls pay.)
So, I'm playing through the game and I've found a few places where the wording, in English, could have been a bit better. For example, where Jamaal is talking to MC. He says" Yeah I freaked out too. Here's an example. I've found a couple of mission dossiers involving Series G clones. Almost all censored." Would it sound better if he ends it with, "Almost all of it redacted." ?
There's another string where you incorrectly used "found" and should have used "find".
Stuff like that. All that said. I absolutely LOVE this game. You can play and as loving and straight-laced or as depraved as you want to. Absolute genius. Thank you for an awesome game and a wonderful AVN!