October 15, 2025

🏴‍☠️ Piracy, Piracy... >.<" - Your input

TL;DR is at the bottom!

Howdy,

This is a pretty personal poll. As you all know, the internet is full of piracy sites. Interestingly, this isn't necessarily all bad, as quite famous studies—like this one from the EU Commission—have suggested piracy doesn't always hurt video game sales: https://www.gamesindustry.biz/eu-commission-no-evidence-that-piracy-affects-video-games-sales.

However, it's also clear that piracy is especially harmful when a game is new, potentially slicing off around 20% of revenue. That's a huge hit! Some developers, especially in the Indie and Visual Novel (VN) space, even claim that for every copy sold, there are 100 pirated ones. Ouch. Still, there are also smaller studies out there suggesting piracy can actually be good for a game in the long run. It's a complicated mess.

Honesty and Ownership

There's a common quote: “Buying isn’t owning, pirating isn’t stealing.” That's not true for my game. When you buy a copy, you own it. You can download it, copy it, and give it to anyone—I have zero control over it.

I prefer my game to be completely honest about data. The last update, for crying out loud, was mostly about fixing a firewall popup, double-checking that the game wasn't sending any data, ripping out the UPD and TCP messaging plugins, and generally hacking away at the Apple ARKit mess. All the data saved by the game are visible and not password protected (mess with those save files if you want!). Copies of the game do not have any secret watermarks or magic strings. Heck, Itch.io doesn't even let me check who downloads my game (or if it does, I certainly can't figure out how!). Even the paywalled versions are made the same way—from the Itch.io perspective, it's just a free game that happens to be password protected.

The Adult Game Developer's Dilemma

Now, let's talk about the adult game industry I'm in. It's a well-known, almost-jokingly true fact that the best way to promote a game is to put it on one of the most famous forums. The whole marketing strategy basically boils down to just getting the game on F95Zone. I've asked fellow developers and even AI, and based on my own experience, it's true: F95Zone is the easiest and probably best way to distribute a game and gain traction.

I put my previous—let's be honest, awful—game there. It gave me access to a broad community, a ton of feedback, a lot of constructive critique, and a healthy dose of fun (and a little trolling).

The main downside? If you just put a demo up, you'll be eaten alive. Someone will likely just buy the full $3 game (it's really not expensive) just to put a full version up anyway, simply to mess with you and have a laugh.

I do not have the time or resources to fight piracy. It's too time-consuming or expensive. I can't afford an agency, and doing it myself is an impossible task when I'm already drowning in tasks just making the game better.

My Plan and Your Input

So, I'm thinking of starting to put the game, with a delay, on F95Zone, starting with version 1.3.

But here’s the rub: If You—my supporters, my Patreons, my SubscribeStars—are against it, I simply won't do it.

At some point, someone else will do it, but then it won't be my thread. I'll have less control, and frankly, I'll look like a fool when I finally try to interact with the F95Zone community after they've already been playing a pirated copy for weeks.

TL;DR

I'm thinking of officially putting the full game on F95Zone, a famous adult game piracy/distribution forum, after a delay.

The Drawbacks:

I officially support a piracy source.
Potential reputation hit among You, my supporters.

The Benefits:

It's the best way to market the game and gain new eyes.
As the original Thread Owner, I'd have some control over the release version and discussion.
It's a great place to gather feedback and have heated discussions.
A lot of current Patreons and Supporters come directly from F95Zone anyway.

Other Information to Consider:

Piracy can kill indie developers, especially for full releases and VNs.
Someone else will inevitably upload it there at some point anyway.