Two Platforms
It's been a while.
We have updated 1-2 a month in the last 5 months. Added a lot of content, bug fixes, features, and whatnot. We still haven't reached 0.2, or as I call it - the major release. But as releases were in focus, so did my patron posts become more rare. Simply because you don't need an update on the game if there is a release (Also I am getting flooded with work on all sides..).
There will be a few more posts in the coming weeks and another release.
But in this post I wanted to talk to you about something else than the game, which is equally important.
Link to Subscribestar
Patreon & Subscribestar
We are happy to have our game Karma hosted on Patreon, to host the Christmas Special, as well as Winter Warmth on it.
Patreon used to be a free speech platform.
But in the past few years, things have become stricter and stricter. White zones turned suddenly grey or even black.
As example recently one dev stated that he got suspended for having a shower scene with cousins.
That isn't glorification or even fetishizing in my eyes. The game in question has a huge focus on the story. One dev could lie, but the fact is.
As of now in the past weeks and months banned patreon pages have become more and more frequent.
On every adult dev platform that I am, a multitude of devs are uncertain and some are more than simply uneasy. They are posting questions like "Is this allowed, that allowed?" and in some cases, we don't know.
Often a story heavy part of a game has to be cut, just in case.
Now comes an even uglier part. Some people understand this very well and try to weaponize this against developers. Case in point Eromancer. To the point, even an admin of a pirate site spoke against that behavior:
Eventually, Eromancer had his page closed and even this happened.
After having been on the platform for over half a decade, he wasn't even allowed to send a message to his supporters.
You can hear more about it here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/97350386
It's one of many cases where an adult dev got booted, with one extra issue.
Potentially getting blackmailed for using Patreon isn't a great outlook.
Where does that leave Winter Warmth?
I always believed and still believe that what we have planned for Winter Warmth is completely in line with the ToS of Patreon. But we know that those ToS have been changing in one direction.
I have people hired. Our earnings from Patreon don't cover much of our expenses. But everything counts and as our revenue rises, I might one day be unable to pay my team, if our main income stream closes without warning.
They deserve better than that and frankly, so do I.
As a solution, some also requested this, we will support SubscribeStar as well.
Our Patreon page will continue to be in use. Subscribestar doesn't support PayPal and has other restrictions & shortcomings.
Some Keypoints:
Releases will be posted on Discord in the future. It's faster and the support is better there. If someone can't join Discord, let me know - we'll figure something out.
SubscribeStar, unlike Patreon, will have 1 Page. We'll fuse Yin and Yang there. I had to adjust the price slightly, so the tiers would be in order. Dark side costs 0.1 dollar more now. This is the smallest amount I could add.
Patreon will continue to get posts. It will get a bit cleaner, as we don't need to post releases here anymore.
We'll reinforce our efforts to use Itch and Steam in the near future, we've already made quite some progress.
Link to Subscribestar
We continue to be on Patreon, I hope they will keep accompanying us. In case they completely change their mind about adult games in the future.
We at least wouldn't have to start from scratch.
Thank you for your support.