Questions about / Discussion on the new rule changes

[HentaiWriter]

There's nowhere that seems to have an actual discussion thread about this, and tbh I find it a bit odd/unclear what the new changes are for it;

• Are the Patreon games ever getting allowed back in the Hentai forums?
• Why is "Games under construction" under "Forum Construction" when games under construction have nothing to do with the forum's construction? Shouldn't they have their own sub category just like MnF and Online Games do in Hentai Games, if they really have to be considered to be a "different type" of game?
• Speaking about that, there's numerous DLSite games that are under construction (you can see three of them on the front page of Hentai Games right now), many of them without even a demo posted, and many that have went completely stagnant with no signs of life; shouldn't those be moved to "Games under construction" as well? If not, why not?

In general this seems like an odd move and like something done out of bias against Patreon games (especially with moving it completely out of Hentai Games) rather than having a logical reason/setup behind it.

I can completely understand the labelling of thread titles, and putting in a tag system, both of those should definitely be done, but moving Patreon games not only into their own sub-forum, but out of Hentai entirely while DLSite and other games that are far less finished than many of the Patreon-funded games get to remain in Hentai's core forum, not even put into a sub-forum.

Would just like some clarity on why these choices were made for Patreon games specifically, and especially if they'll ever be allowed back in Hentai Games as well as whether they'd be allowed in a sub forum at least within Hentai Games, etc.

EDIT: Examples of threads with DLSite or other non-Patreon funded games that are WIPs on the first two pages alone;
https://ulmf.org/threads/urutoramanboo-souruobufantazumu-soul-of-phantasm-rj219900.11545/ (no demo linked on thread)
https://ulmf.org/threads/cauchemar-merutinaito-melty-night-rj213056.8591/ (game seems to be completely dead, last blog post was in 2017)
https://ulmf.org/threads/maitora-zukinchantona.7404/ (game is still incomplete, sporadically updated)
https://ulmf.org/threads/libraheart-the-sword-of-succubus.11962/ (just announced, but definitely incomplete)
https://ulmf.org/threads/guideone-lust-knight-adventure.6247/ (blog has had no posts for 2 years)
---------------------------------------

EDIT #2: Was told that they're doing it to Patreon, Enty, Ci-en and all other funding models, and that they'll be moved back into Hentai Games at some point, with the subforum name possibly changed.
It still doesn't make any sense though why they would be made into a separate forum though given that where or what you're funded by doesn't fundamentally change a game's makeup inherently, IMO to be truly fair a game should be moved into "under construction" if it's anything but fully complete, regardless of funding by a crowdfunding site or not.

 

[habisain]

Well, for reference this is the thread it was discussed in. It got locked due to the general hostility of those commenting, and then moved to a very low volume subsection, so let's keep this thread civil. Also of relevance is the new rules on posting in the Games Under Construction forum.

I think a fair summary of that discussion thread, at least with regards to Patreon, is that a number of users were worried about there being too many Patreon projects being advertised on ULMF, and that DarkFire had been wanting to move all the Patreon projects into their own section. I'm not sure if the two are actually linked - it's a bit hard to tell because I'm not sure how much of the thread remains intact (I understand that there was some degree of moderation that happened). There also seems to be some users who object to non-Japanese games being discussed on ULMF period, due to their perception that the average quality of Western games being lower than Japanese games, and have used Patreon as a proxy to identify Western games.

It should be noted that at least one of the users advocating this change appears to state that Patreon devs should leave ULMF for other internet locations, or at least focus on other locations much more than ULMF. I'm not sure if that's a widespread attitude.

To be honest, I'm don't find any of those arguments convincing, but then again I'm not the one making decisions.

Incidentally, where would one put a discussion on algorithmic decensoring research which might in the future be funded by Patreon (but might not be, and certainly isn't at present)? As far as I can tell there isn't really a good place to put it, or at least not somewhere with high visibility, despite the fact that this is something I assume a lot of people would be interested in.

 

[Jesus]

I didn't know in-dev games were going to be shuffled off to their own forum and don't like that they have been.
In my opinion the better option would be to enforce use of the prefix for its development status, and square brackets for its gameplay genre, eg:
[Active Development] [RPG] [DevName] EngTitle/JPTitle (RJ######) - and even more importantly, filters accounting for all these things.
At the very least, the UC sub-forum does belong under Hentai Games.
I also don't like that we're not to provide machine translations of Japanese titles into English if none otherwise exists, it makes no sense. Even an inaccurate English title is a lot more readable and identifiable to the average user that doesn't understand Japanese.

Furthermore the notion that non-JP/Western H-games shouldn't or don't belong here is completely ridiculous. It's all fap material at the end of the day and that's the common thread of this forum, and I wouldn't know about half of the games I am or have been following were they not allowed here. Likewise, the source of funding is of zero relevance. There's nothing anti-consumer or otherwise inherently wrong or immoral about promoting a game's/dev's Patreon campaign. If someone's interested in a given project and wants to see it succeed they should be as free as possible to find out about it and decide whether they want to financially support it. People using those threads as an anti-Patreon platform should not scuttle the entire thread - more hands-on moderation would help (And again, I'm willing to put my money where my mouth is here) - However, there's equally nothing wrong with discussing whether a particular Patreon is a "Scam" or otherwise falling short of its promises, so long as evidence is provided.

Edit 08/30:

To bring this up again:

http://imgur.com/LffGK6Y

Imagine this, but with the title format. Automated infrastructure for users to vote on new tags, and for games to be moved between sections when the OP changes its release status, as well as an auto-filled template for the OP (Edit: https://ulmf.org/threads/op-standards-template-hentai-games-section.9444/ ) would make this even better.

New version

NOTE - I forgot Checkboxes for Genre, Crowdfunding and Release Status in the Filter section

 

[YummyTiger]

I agree completely with Jesus' post. Splitting games by funding is a ridiculous idea and is simply anti-Patreon through and through (which is silly, because Patreon is the reason a western market is emerging). I also cringe every time I see the notion that Japanese games are inherently higher quality. Do the people making this argument even browse DLSite? It's filled with RPG Maker 12-15 CG cheap games, with the occasional high quality title emerging. Like every market, quality varies and there will only be a few top tier titles.

I can understand the idea of splitting by completion status, but I concur that tags could just as easily solve the problem. The current split seems driven by an ignorant hate of Patreon. It was legitimately sad to read through the thread that Habisain linked to. I don't believe this split is representative of the entire community, but if it is what the moderators want, then so be it.

 

[DarkFire1004]

To be quite honest, I'm pretty preturbed by the fact that you all see this as a Patreon-hated driven act. When have I ever shown even an inkling of dislike for it? And for that matter, where were all of your contributions when we had a month long discussion about what to change? The thread never left even the first two pages the entire time.

The current changes are to test out different peoples' suggestions so I can see how to best evenly distribute traffic in the section. Nothing more and nothing less. You're welcome to make more suggestions here, but I'm probably not going to try them out for a while. There's a ton of stuff I need to move around right now.

Incidentally, where would one put a discussion on algorithmic decensoring research which might in the future be funded by Patreon (but might not be, and certainly isn't at present)? As far as I can tell there isn't really a good place to put it, or at least not somewhere with high visibility, despite the fact that this is something I assume a lot of people would be interested in.

Since it isn't a game necessarily, but has to do with games, it would be placed in this section here.

 

[HentaiWriter]

To be quite honest, I'm pretty preturbed by the fact that you all see this as a Patreon-hated driven act. When have I ever shown even an inkling of dislike for it? And for that matter, where were all of your contributions when we had a month long discussion about what to change? The thread never left even the first two pages the entire time.

You did say that it's targeted towards not only Patreon, but also Ci-en, Enty, and others, which makes it not particularly Patreon-only, but it does make it "crowdfunding sites" only, which still falls in line with what everyone else in this thread is saying in that "just because a game is crowd funded, should not separate it from other games", and that it should be "unfinished games regardless of funding source" if you were to go this route.

As far as where our contributions were, they were in the last 3+ threads about this topic I posted multiple times in every thread that was multiple-months long, months and years prior to the month long discussion one, I just didn't post in that most recent one because as far as I had known, due to the overwhelming number of votes against this kind of a change, that the issue had been decided. It's likely that everyone else concerned about this change also didn't post in the new topics for the same reason.

Unfortunately most of those old topics have since been deleted, but the most recent one I did post in; https://ulmf.org/threads/patreon-subforum.10122/post-948596 multiple times, even. There used to be a poll on it and the other ones, and yeah, votes were overwhelmingly for "separate things by genre" or "keep it as it is", with third most being "put everything unfinished in one area regardless of funding", and the fourth most with barely any votes being "only do crowdfunded games in a category".

The new topic was also pretty hidden away; as far as I know, there was no global ping or announcement to let people know about it, it wasn't in the hentai games main forum, etc. so most people probably never even knew about it.

Honestly, if we're talking forum cleanup, a lot of the subforums here have little to no use in terms of actual activity, some of which haven't been posted in in years. For example;

- This very forum, "Forum Development", could easily go under "News and Announcements". Having its own main section that's as big as Hentai is kind of overkill.
- As much as Linemarvel is responsible for founding this forum, and it's awesome that he's back, let's be real; people post in that main section once in a blue moon. It could easily go into "Everything Else".
- Under "The Blank Page", there's a "short story competition" category that has literally not had a post in almost six years. Should have its posts moved to an archive or just removed outright.
- "Archives / Personal Corners / Comment Threads" under the same area has posts go all the way back to 2015 on the first page alone; could probably just have its posts moved into the main "The Blank Page" category.
- "Erotica / Smut", same thing as above. Posts go back to 2012 on the first page.
- Honestly, all of the sub categories on "The Blank Page" could just be pushed into the main thing, which has posts going back to 2013 on the first page, given labels to note if it's artwork/erotica/personal stuff etc. and you'd already have a ton less clutter on the front page.
- Under "Everything Else", I can understand keeping the "Archive" if you really want to (even with some sections only having a single post going back to 2008), but "Trash Can" seems kind of redundant to have around. If they're dead threads, why not delete them?
- Also under "Everything Else", the "Shitposting" category is only four threads. They're in 2018, but they could probably just be moved into "Everything Else", to be honest.
- Going back up some to Hentai, "Hentai Reviews" is pretty much dead and could honestly have its threads moved into the main category, or merged with "Other Hentai Media", or if you wanted to liven it up, could be put into "Hentai Games" given that the description of it is to "discuss adult games".
- I get that the "Role Play Section" has a lot of dedicated posters on the site, but there are multiple categories that are completely dead. As in, 60-70% of them haven't seen a post in their category since 2017 or earlier. All of the 2017-non-posters could be moved into the RPG Archives and instantly clean that up visually.
- Play By Post, same thing. There's three of them that haven't been posted in since 2017 or earlier, and two more that haven't had a post since Feb. of this year. Could all be moved into an archive.

Doing these changes would reduce a ton of clutter on the front page, get rid of a ton of ancient posts cluttering up stuff, and so on.

I would even say doing a global post where you tell users to "report" threads that have barely any info or no demo link or etc. would work wonders in saving you time finding these threads that are incomplete (or games labeled as incomplete that are actually complete, as I found quite a few of those) and then you could just run down the list altering or moving things.

 

[YummyTiger]

To be quite honest, I'm pretty preturbed by the fact that you all see this as a Patreon-hated driven act. When have I ever shown even an inkling of dislike for it? And for that matter, where were all of your contributions when we had a month long discussion about what to change? The thread never left even the first two pages the entire time.

Sorry if I implied you, as I don't believe you have that mindset. I'm referring to arguments that I've seen basically referring to crowdfunded games as a plague on the forum, and best moved somewhere else. I agree that there are more and more of them, but I've never understood why more options is a bad thing. I remember when there were hardly any western games and I'd longingly look at the Japanese market and all their titles. Now, there are more games than I'll be able to play, and it's pretty awesome.

Also, since I'm posting, thanks for all your help over the years. You've definitely always treated me with respect, and I appreciate it. I fully understand if you want to try this style out and see how it goes, I was just posting my thoughts. As HW said, I also did contribute to the discussion awhile back, but didn't even see that previous thread.

 

[HentaiWriter]

Also, since I'm posting, thanks for all your help over the years. You've definitely always treated me with respect, and I appreciate it. I fully understand if you want to try this style out and see how it goes, I was just posting my thoughts.

Wanted to second all of this, for me too. ULMF has just had a lot of hard times over the last year and I'd hate to see it fracture itself even more because of a very tiny group that constantly complains about crowdfunded stuff.

If you ran a poll, I'm fairly positive it would come out heavily in favor of not segregating, or at least putting all unfinished stuff in a forum rather than just crowdfunded stuff.

 

[DarkFire1004]

You did say that it's targeted towards not only Patreon, but also Ci-en, Enty, and others, which makes it not particularly Patreon-only, but it does make it "crowdfunding sites" only, which still falls in line with what everyone else in this thread is saying in that "just because a game is crowd funded, should not separate it from other games", and that it should be "unfinished games regardless of funding source" if you were to go this route.

Yes, and as I've said, I'm trying out some suggestions that've already been made. This happens to be the easiest to implement. And I'll try another when I'm satisfied with what I learned.

As far as where our contributions were, they were in the last 3+ threads about this topic I posted multiple times in every thread that was multiple-months long, months and years prior to the month long discussion one, I just didn't post in that most recent one because as far as I had known, due to the overwhelming number of votes against this kind of a change, that the issue had been decided. It's likely that everyone else concerned about this change also didn't post in the new topics for the same reason.

I'm not talking about contributions to the Patreon discussion. The issue in the latest thread wasn't focused on the crowdfunding topic until near the end. It was just for general reformatting and what people wanted to see reorganized the most.

I am aware of the thread with the poll; I was the one who made it. I am also very aware of the fact that after conceding that people wanted genre separation, I started asking multiple times for somebody to provide a clearly laid plan for what genres should be used, how should I be enforcing the rules, what to do with issues like multi-genre games (since I was going to be the one to lay out the brickwork for it), nobody actually stepped up to write anything, and I refused to on grounds that it wasn't the idea I was comfortable with drafting. And no admins even implemented any of the more commonly agreed-upon requests, despite their partaking in the thread.

Hence why the newest thread is the one I'm going off of; actual consensus was reached with something easily implementable as a stepping stone for future development with minimal involvement with the admins.

The new topic was also pretty hidden away; as far as I know, there was no global ping or announcement to let people know about it, it wasn't in the hentai games main forum, etc. so most people probably never even knew about it.

Aside from the global notification, that's pretty much false. As I've said, it never even left the first two pages of the H-Games section. It's only in the section it is now because of this:

It got locked due to the general hostility of those commenting, and then moved to a very low volume subsection, so let's keep this thread civil.

I would even say doing a global post where you tell users to "report" threads that have barely any info or no demo link or etc. would work wonders in saving you time finding these threads that are incomplete (or games labeled as incomplete that are actually complete, as I found quite a few of those) and then you could just run down the list altering or moving things.

Now this is what I really want to talk about. I would normally do something like that, but I need to be sure of something. Does the forum actually care about quality? Which is why I've issued that ultimatum: Fix the threads I find, or they get deleted. Before any more reorganizing happens, I'm going to make sure people understand that there needs to be a set standard quality for posts. Hence, a culling before I continue, even if it means losing valuable information on otherwise niche and unknown games.

Also, I don't handle any sections besides the H-Section, so if you wish to see reorganization in other sections, you'll need to bring that up in the Forum Development section (By the way, I think you might be confused. We're in a newly created section for H-Games discussion, not the Forum Development section). But I'll be the first to tell you that a lot of the stuff there is legacy, which is why it likely won't be taken down. If you'd like to make more suggestions on how to reorganize this section, you can certainly post them, but just note that I definitely won't be acting on them for a while.

Also, since I'm posting, thanks for all your help over the years. You've definitely always treated me with respect, and I appreciate it. I fully understand if you want to try this style out and see how it goes, I was just posting my thoughts. As HW said, I also did contribute to the discussion awhile back, but didn't even see that previous thread.

Wanted to second all of this, for me too. ULMF has just had a lot of hard times over the last year and I'd hate to see it fracture itself even more because of a very tiny group that constantly complains about crowdfunded stuff.

If you ran a poll, I'm fairly positive it would come out heavily in favor of not segregating, or at least putting all unfinished stuff in a forum rather than just crowdfunded stuff.

No worries. As HW said, this probably won't be permanent. Just wanna see how traffic readjusts. Also, I owe you all an apology. I said it'd be fixed by today, but the section still hasn't been brought over here. I've contacted an admin again to hopefully clear things up.

Edit - Whoop, scratch that. It got moved.

 

[Fenril]

One thing I'll admit to is I stopped discussing in the discussion thread when I saw a different mod getting into fights arguments with other users. Didn't want to stoke the coals of the flames, so to speak. Anyways, I said my thoughts early and they really haven't changed.

But to reiterate something we did talk about: we didn't like the idea of the games section becoming oversaturated with crowdfunding threads. Or at the very least, crowdfunding threads where the creators treat the forums more like a billboard to advertise their games where they essentially copy-and-paste their project's description and then vanish soon afterwards. If the creators where willing to communicate with us afterwards and discuss the feedback, that's perfectly fine.

 

[bobthemanseven]

My opinion on crowdfunding in general is that it's pretty scummy. Say what you will about yourself, the fact remains that there have been *many* very public failures and borderline scams coming from crowdfunding websites, Patreon included. Whether or not the majority are good or bad doesn't matter at this point, it's not a gamble many are willing to take anymore. I feel that separating the incomplete/crowdfunded games is the best way to avoid a lot of unnecessary vitriol. It makes your Patreons and your livelihoods harder to get and maintain, but at the same time those people who are constantly hating on you would never have supported you anyways and probably contributed a lot to skepticism, deserved or otherwise. They also now have to go out of their way to step on toes which gives greater reason for mods to act on posts which contribute nothing and simply add fuel to the fire.

Now I know I'm going to come across as an asshole here, but separating the incomplete games also makes your threads easier to spot because general thread traffic will be reduced and actual update posts from creators will be more visible. You'll also be put alongside more high profile crowdfunded games such as Night of Revenge.

I am currently all for the current changes, and see it as a vast improvement which will lead to higher thread quality overall.

 

[YummyTiger]

But to reiterate something we did talk about: we didn't like the idea of the games section becoming oversaturated with crowdfunding threads.

The reason you see more and more is because crowdfunding IS the industry for the most part. So, in arguing to not include crowdfunding games, you're basically arguing to ignore the majority of western content altogether. If you're of the mindset that we should separate Japanese titles from western titles, then maybe excluding crowdfunding makes sense--for a time. I've already seen a movement on DLSite to release incomplete games and finish them in patches, it's not such a stretch to see more and more of the Japanese market move to their Patreon-like platforms. Given the high levels of piracy, crowdfunding just makes more sense.

As I said, I see the argument for separating incomplete/complete, that makes sense, although tags would work just as well. Any argument about trying to separate based on funding and put crowdfunding into some box because you think it's "scummy" is just silly. Non-crowdfunding games can be scummy to. Have you seen the DLC practices today? What about the bug-ridden messes that are released? What about those DLSite games that promised more content/patches and then simply moved on to a new game to increase revenue? Given time and options, crowdfunding actually offers the consumer more control over content than any other model. It's just incredibly new and still a "wild west" in many ways.

 

[Fenril]

The reason you see more and more is because crowdfunding IS the industry for the most part. So, in arguing to not include crowdfunding games, you're basically arguing to ignore the majority of western content altogether. If you're of the mindset that we should separate Japanese titles from western titles, then maybe excluding crowdfunding makes sense--for a time. I've already seen a movement on DLSite to release incomplete games and finish them in patches, it's not such a stretch to see more and more of the Japanese market move to their Patreon-like platforms. Given the high levels of piracy, crowdfunding just makes more sense.

As I said, I see the argument for separating incomplete/complete, that makes sense, although tags would work just as well. Any argument about trying to separate based on funding and put crowdfunding into some box because you think it's "scummy" is just silly. Non-crowdfunding games can be scummy to. Have you seen the DLC practices today? What about the bug-ridden messes that are released? What about those DLSite games that promised more content/patches and then simply moved on to a new game to increase revenue? Given time and options, crowdfunding actually offers the consumer more control over content than any other model. It's just incredibly new and still a "wild west" in many ways.

Thank you for completely missing the point and ignoring the rest of what I said. I wasn't talking about the ethics or anything about the industry itself. I was talking about how it's been affecting these boards. Regardless, I already know what your stance is so you don't need to preach it to me.

 

[bobthemanseven]

Maybe the market should move away from crowdfunding their games if the scummy label upsets you. The way I see it, taking donations monthly for an unfinished game with unclear goals or shifting goals is a scummy business model. Skimming your patreon shows me that your last project was finished in 2016, which means you've been taking donations for 2 years and your current project is still in alpha version with no release date. The fact of the matter is that crowdfunding is weakening the western market because patreon rewards creators who take as long as possible to finish a game, and it doesn't matter whether you are taking monthly donations or release donations.

EDIT: Just noticed this, but you only made enough progress in 4 months to iterate your game from 0.10 to 0.11? What were you doing the whole time?

 

[HentaiWriter]

My opinion on crowdfunding in general is that it's pretty scummy. Say what you will about yourself, the fact remains that there have been *many* very public failures and borderline scams coming from crowdfunding websites, Patreon included.

There have been infinitely more failed AAA games that took hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars from investors with nothing given in return.

Whether or not the majority are good or bad doesn't matter at this point, it's not a gamble many are willing to take anymore.

Untrue, as Patreon campaigns continue to grow with more of them created every day. I understand that some people are more worried due to big-name failures, but overall, the amount of people who are making progress and continuing to be transparent and honest increase by the day, while the latter decreases.

those people who are constantly hating on you would never have supported you anyways and probably contributed a lot to skepticism, deserved or otherwise.

Also untrue; there have been multiple people from ULMF alone, including some of our staunchest disbelievers like Papanomics who bashed us for years, who now support our game and are behind it.
I think skepticism is a healthy thing, because if your game is actually good and quality, and your work ethic is solid and delivers, in the end the majority of people will come to see that you're doing/making a good thing and their money was well spent.
It also shows people publicly that you're willing to listen to others and to take those blows, so to speak, without crumbling or giving up on your game.

Maybe the market should move away from crowdfunding their games if the scummy label upsets you.

You'd rather the market move back to large investor funded games only, where there's;
- zero transparency on game development/progress
- much higher chance of failure or poor quality because games have much more investor pressure
- no way to communicate with the developers
- no way to influence the game or give feedback on it as it develops
- much less chance to have something innovative or original

I personally see crowdfunding as the future because investor funded games have been a problem for a long, long time because of all of those reasons above. Investor funded games are what lead to things like No Man's Sky, where, if that game had been crowdfunded, you would have seen the problems with it and the falsehoods years ago, but because they were able to keep it all under wraps, they made off with millions.

The way I see it, taking donations monthly for an unfinished game with unclear goals or shifting goals is a scummy business model.

AAA and large investor funded games change goals and have unclear goals as practically an unspoken industry standard. TF2 changed its model and gameplay numerous times through development, scrapping itself over and over, and Overwatch was meant to be an MMO originally with no FPS gameplay at all. The difference is that again if it were crowdfunded, you would have been able to see these changes going on and either root for them or remove your money and force the creator's hand by saying "no, this is a dumb idea, don't do it".

Skimming your patreon shows me that your last project was finished in 2016, which means you've been taking donations for 2 years and your current project is still in alpha version with no release date. Just noticed this, but you only made enough progress in 4 months to iterate your game from 0.10 to 0.11? What were you doing the whole time?

In Yummy's defense, he has his Patron on "only take money per release". Those 2 years he's been taking donations, he hasn't actually gotten anything because he hasn't done releases, to my knowledge.

The fact of the matter is that crowdfunding is weakening the western market because patreon rewards creators who take as long as possible to finish a game, and it doesn't matter whether you are taking monthly donations or release donations.

This is the main crux of your argument though, and the thing I have to point out as to why your entire argument doesn't work.

Patreon itself and crowdfunding itself is not inherently scummy. It is objectively, at its core, more honest and less prone to failure than AAA big investor funded titles.
The entire problem itself is actually the small amount of developers who DO abuse the system and the people funding those abusers as well.

This is what you have to realize. If a Patreon game is made by an honest, hardworking team, it is objectively a better choice for making a game because of transparency, community influence/feedback, and many more reasons.
The whole reason you have this viewpoint of Patreon being scummy needs to be shifted from Patreon or crowdfunding being scummy, from the people who are abusing the system and the people who continue to pay people who are abusing the system instead of backing honest/hardworking devs being scummy.

There are honest, hardworking devs who are busting their ass and extremely transparent with what they do on crowdfunding sites, and there's nothing remotely scummy about what they're doing.

There's one more problem with your statement too; the whole thing about "rewarding creators who take as long as possible to finish a game" is untrue, too. Look at Akabur; he used to have double his monthly pledges, but he slacked off and stopped releasing stuff for a long while, and now he's dropped significantly as a result, and continues to drop.

Additionally, you would make FAR more money by getting your game completed and releasing it on Steam and other places while continuing to work on a sequel or another game on the same Patreon;
- House Party made over $1,000,000 in the first few months of its release on Steam alone
- Meltys Quest made over $300,000 in the first 3 months on Steam alone
- Countless other adult games on Steam alone have sold 100,000+ copies, so at least a $100,000 profit even after Steam takes its cut

And now there's countless other sites like Fakku, Gamejolt, Itch, MangaGamer, JAST, Nutaku, Denpasoft, DLSite, and Patreon itself technically that you could sell your adult games on, meaning you'd be getting profit from all those other places.
If someone were really in it just for the money, they would absolutely want to complete their game as fast as possible with the highest quality possible to get hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars in sales from everywhere I just listed combined.

 

[habisain]

Maybe the market should move away from crowdfunding their games if the scummy label upsets you. The way I see it, taking donations monthly for an unfinished game with unclear goals or shifting goals is a scummy business model. Skimming your patreon shows me that your last project was finished in 2016, which means you've been taking donations for 2 years and your current project is still in alpha version with no release date. The fact of the matter is that crowdfunding is weakening the western market because patreon rewards creators who take as long as possible to finish a game, and it doesn't matter whether you are taking monthly donations or release donations.

EDIT: Just noticed this, but you only made enough progress in 4 months to iterate your game from 0.10 to 0.11? What were you doing the whole time?

That's an issue with ethics, not with crowdfunding per se. For starters, not all crowdfunders charge monthly. Showing that the spirit of irony is alive and well, critiquing YummyTiger for taking donations for 2 years is also comically missing the point: YummyTiger has never charged monthly. Yes, there are always going to be scummy people who abuse a system, but it's not a particular problem to crowdfunding. I mean, how much shovelware is there on DLSite itself? The only reason why DLSite shovelware doesn't get discussed is because the people with an interest in promoting it are mostly Japanese speakers, and therefore a language barrier locks them out.

Perhaps the simplest way forward is to apply the same rules that are applied to any other thread: Only create a thread in the main section when there is a functional demo (i.e. not an "alpha quality" demo)? That would certainly keep a lot of the ethically unsound Patreon's out.

EDIT: Ninja'd by HentaiWriter, but I think we're on the same page here.

 

[bobthemanseven]

Well I just got thoroughly thrashed, and want to make a counter argument but we're getting off topic (and I don't want another verbal beatdown.)

I agree with habisain here. If you've got a functional non alpha demo then posting in the main section with proper tags would be fine. Proper reporting and moderation would also solve the unethical creators who create threads regardless.

 

[habisain]

Having had a little think about it, there was one critical word missed from my recommendation. I should have said: "a functional (i.e. non-alpha) public demo". If it's something that's restricted to Patreon's only, it probably shouldn't be in the main section, because there arguably isn't anything to discus for non-Patreon folk. And again with the entire ethics thing - demo's are a good way for people to see what they're backing (or buying on actual game storefronts); paywalling all your demos seems a bit scummy. Note: I'm not against paywalling some demos as a backer benefit; Future Fragments is a good example here, as backers have access to more demo versions, but the general public can play a fairly good demo as well - so I think that's ethically above board. This is in contrast to other projects where all demo builds are paywalled off, and so I don't really see how people can get a good idea of what they're backing beyond any description from the developer, which is a less ethically sound position.

 

[HentaiWriter]

Having had a little think about it, there was one critical word missed from my recommendation. I should have said: "a functional (i.e. non-alpha) public demo". If it's something that's restricted to Patreon's only, it probably shouldn't be in the main section, because there arguably isn't anything to discus for non-Patreon folk. And again with the entire ethics thing - demo's are a good way for people to see what they're backing (or buying on actual game storefronts); paywalling all your demos seems a bit scummy.

I agree with all of this, but with one caveat;

Patreon actively makes you hide any posts with any direct links to NSFW content in your posts. Meaning, if you're releasing a demo on Patreon and your link goes to that demo directly, you have to private the post/put it behind a paywall.

That also said, I was recently told that as long as your game abides by Patreon guidelines, you can do something like Patreon post > SFW website (Gamejolt, for instance) with absolutely nothing NSFW on it when you visit > NSFW game link, where the completely SFW website is a buffer in between the Patreon post (or front page) and the game link itself.

This is still a risk though, I should warn, because while I was told this by staff, not everyone may have gotten the memo (much like at a lot of companies with a lot of staff checking policy/regulation stuff) and so you will open yourself up to potentially being suspended if the wrong person happens to check your profile, which is why we don't do it and why we go with "have a polished public demo 2-3 months into development, then another one halfway through development, then another one once development's completed" route.

EDIT:

Well I just got thoroughly thrashed, and want to make a counter argument but we're getting off topic (and I don't want another verbal beatdown.)
I agree with habisain here. If you've got a functional non alpha demo then posting in the main section with proper tags would be fine. Proper reporting and moderation would also solve the unethical creators who create threads regardless.

I also agree with all of this, but I will say my intent wasn't to thrash you or anything like that, my intent was just to show you a different perspective that you may not have considered, which (should be) the point of all discussions, to see different points of view

 

[habisain]

I agree with all of this, but with one caveat;

Patreon actively makes you hide any posts with any direct links to NSFW content in your posts. Meaning, if you're releasing a demo on Patreon and your link goes to that demo directly, you have to private the post/put it behind a paywall.

That also said, I was recently told that as long as your game abides by Patreon guidelines, you can do something like Patreon post > SFW website (Gamejolt, for instance) with absolutely nothing NSFW on it when you visit > NSFW game link, where the completely SFW website is a buffer in between the Patreon post (or front page) and the game link itself.

This is still a risk though, I should warn, because while I was told this by staff, not everyone may have gotten the memo (much like at a lot of companies with a lot of staff checking policy/regulation stuff) and so you will open yourself up to potentially being suspended if the wrong person happens to check your profile, which is why we don't do it and why we go with "have a polished public demo 2-3 months into development, then another one halfway through development, then another one once development's completed" route.

I think what you're saying is that Patreon cannot a) have any content NSFW that's public and b) cannot have any NSFW content directly linked. In that case, I don't think there's a problem with my suggestion; My suggestion is that the public demo should be generally available to at least the people in ULMF, so that a) there is something available to evaluate and b) for something to discus for general members of ULMF. While Patreon creators might have issues with promoting NSFW content to the wider Internet (as due to the policty it is presumably hard for people discovering the project via Patreon to find the public demo), there doesn't appear to be a problem with distributing the demo on ULMF itself. In fact, that's kind of exactly what you do: the public demo for Future Fragments does not appear to be linked in public from your Patreon, but you have no problems distributing it here via your signature!