I’ve left my feelings about it on the patreon. It’s now half a year since there’s even been a picture of the game yet he still takes people’s money. It’s following the exact same thing as vocalabs. Said the update was nearly done in june, nothing until August saying june and july patreons will be reimbursed and that it’s nearly done and then here we are in November with the guy ghosting people for months.
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I personally feel that subscription type services are just wrong kind of type of service to support this sort of projects. Yeah I understand how it creates sort of steady flow of money to the creator but I just can’t help but feel like giving money for nothing if the project doesn’t feels like it’s in active development. That said I stopped my support on Patreon until there is some concrete progress.
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tbh. I expect the situation is similar to what it was before 0.3 if its still not outright cancelled. He was out of country for extended period of time letting patreons know only after he returned, as I suspect his earning would go down more if he posted about his absence, than when he is just silent. at least Patreon now allows to follow for free…
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Personal preference but i don’t mind still supporting a patreon if the dev is upfront about the situation i don’t mind delays or if life happens. My pet hate though is when they decide to go silent for months not letting people who support them know what’s going on. The idea of not letting people know the truth to get a few months money for nothing is morally wrong to be honest.
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i’m with you their they could at least give us a short update every month or so i mean it’s only a few damn minutes after all of their own time to tell us the community and fan base what is going on even if you haven’t had the time to make progress on the update
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My comment seemed to have disappeared, so let’s shorten it.
The game is a money grab
First update he tried, latest was poor ai images that didn’t match anything
That update had a big jump in supporters so he got more money
Hype died down, he shows a basic render
Does it again
Few months pass, he says he’s nearly done, more hype, more supporters
When you look at the game properly the only real good content was the pre ai render and after that he made lots of money and put little effort in.
End of month beginning of December he will probably apologise and say its out at the end of the month and it will be the ai image versions promising the original art is nearly finished
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To be clear, the dude isn’t just making AI art, they are first creating the models and then presumably using img to img to make the new picture. I would assume they did this because they were concerned with either the quality of the models not being great or that they could get more images per model by using AI.
But either way crafting your own 3d models is a bear of a task, and the pressure of creating a game is also massive, especially as a first time dev.
Ultimately the main problem is a lack of communication which is a problem tons of creators share. I highly doubt they are trying to scam anyone but at a certain point it would be ethical to pause billing unless they have a clear idea of the exact launch date.
But at the same time It’s not unusual for game creators to just not release anything for months at a time. It just depends on how you see Patreon, either as a recurring tip jar, or as paying for a service.
I’m inclined to think of it more as the latter, but people are allowed to spend money how they like.
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There have been a number of gaps before but without any word since August 1 the current 3 month gap is the longest, at least for the patreon. It’s possible that bobo is caught in a cycle of the update taking longer, feeling like he needs to make it more worthwhile, which adds time, which makes him feel it needs more - creating an endless loop.
That said, it’s been a long while without any word now - and the Patreon hasn’t had many new images - though the older ones posted do indicate that genuine effort is/was going to the project rather than it being an AI cashgrab - I’m thinking of the May 28 normal map revision as something that you wouldn’t bother with if you were going low effort.
But it has been months of total silence and while I wouldn’t be surprised if the update comes out at some point I think the default should be that the project is dead, either as a grift or due to paralysis on the part of Bobo.
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The reason i don’t believe it’s the time release that’s the issue is that multiple people have said on the patreon since June that if there’s a delay nobody is actually bothered but they want to be kept in the loop. Bobo is more than aware of this. Vocalabs in his final months scamming people kept people hanging on saying it’s nearly done and it’ll be out soon then silence and Bobo is doing the exact same thing. The reality is there’s not been an update on progress since May. There’s been two posts since June saying the game’s not dead but multiple people have requested proof and since people have asked for proof (a screenshot of anything happening) Bobo has gone MIA.
Vocalabs posted photos of an update when pushed when in reality he’d created a few updates to get the patreon money in and then scammed people for thousands for months and is still taking money to this day. Bobo is now in that category for me. It’s been half a year with no update on the game and then when people got wise to it released a small statement in August to say the game isn’t dead but refused to show any proof but said just enough to get people to stay subbed for another three months. He’s had plenty of time to clarify things but people like this need to be held accountable. They’re getting thousands a month for nothing. The update was nearly done in June, then August and now it’s November.
If Bobo has given up or had life issues no problem i can empathise with it. If he’d stated the game was on hiatus everyone would be okay with it and either unsub or chose to carry on supporting regardless that’s their choice. Refusing to be honest and just ignoring everyone is exactly what Voca did and it is scamming people out of money.
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Well it is sad, cause the game is so good, and well even with small updates all would be fine, or some kind of communication
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I really don’t think it’s a scam when he posted “feel free to unsub and as long as you were a sub in X month you’ll get a copy”. And this game definitely isn’t random money grab, homeboy is way off the mark.
But yeah, the lack of communication really kills it. There are games (not even WG fetish) that’ve been 1+ year without an update, but still retain happy subs since the author shares communication and random renders.
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For real. I typically give a ton of benefit of the doubt as these games are almost always passion projects but it has been 6 months since the last picture of any sort and posts of “update almost done!” and now 3 months of radio silence. If issues have come up, the community has been overwhelmingly supportive of “yo just let us know, it’s cool life happens”. Instead its just the same thing over and over.
Call me a cynic, but this is feeling like a gigascam just like Vocalabs. Since the last actual content teaser update, he has gotten close to $10,000 of revenue from our community and hasn’t given so much as a single picture. It is pretty transparent that if he cared about the update or patrons he could give some form of communication and actual content post, otherwise he could have pause patron payments. Instead its just the same promise to keep people hooked in then silence over and over all while collecting a fat paycheck.
If this was a small project than no harm, no foul; it’s whatever. But bro 6 months and $10k and not even a single picture just “it’s coming soon!” and then dead silence? Yeah scam and a half. lol
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This ^
Bro said “you can just unsubscribe and I’ll give you the new version if you were subscribed before”, idk what scammer would do this. I get being frustrated at the lack of communication and progress but the constant dogpiling on him definitely won’t help…
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Considering the update will never come, the promise of getting it seems a bit pointless.
It’s a way to get trust, like you said, how can he be a scammer, he’s offering it to people when it’s done if they unsub. He did that before although when I subbed in that time frame he tried his best to make it seem I was out of the time frame and he was doing me a massive favour.
If unhappy people who keep posting there disappointment leave it only leaves people who haven’t been on as long asking if he is OK and they are willing to wait.
He’s slowly loosing money but still getting over 1k, cause people fall for the scam who either are new, like find the game on a pirated site and want to see if there’s new content, or people hoping if they sub now it will be out in a month
Then a generic post, everyone will be like “I hope you’re OK”, “take your time”, or “glad the games not dead”.
Just ignore everything, the patreon, this page, everything.
If he does update, remember how many renders he had done 3 months ago. I reckon it will be low quality ai images again
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I’ve tried developing a game before (without patreon, so people didn’t owe me anything) and I know the pressure of unhappy people constantly whining about updates taking a long time to happen definitely takes a toll on a solo game dev. I definitely understand your frustration but I really don’t think turning the last 100 or so posts on this thread into “bobo is a scammer” will help at all, quite the opposite actually.
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I know the pressure
Bro, he’s literally making 1k per month doing literally nothing. He is facing 0 pressure. Patreon doesn’t put any onus on the owner to create any content for subscribers and this sub literally deletes comments like “hey so this project hasn’t received any undate or dev post in a year…is it dead?”
Bobo faces zero pressure. 49% of U.S. wage earners have a net of under 40k. It’s ridiculous to pull out the tiny violin for a guy earning 12k/year on a Renpy project that hasn’t seen an update in like half a year.
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Yes breaking our site rules does often result in posts being moderated. Not that it would accomplish much since the dev has not logged in to the site since May. I don’t know what you would hope to accomplish by asking for an update here to begin with, as it’s always been against our community guidelines to ask for updates or declare projects dead.
Anyone who is subbing or still subbed to a patreon that has never had a dev that was that active or posted regularly is doing so by there choice. The dev hasn’t been luring people into subbing with false information or promises. While I can understand wanting to “protect the community” from a dev that is doing something malicious this isn’t what is happening.
The fact of that matter is that people are free to spend there money how they see fit. And if someone is coming here and subbing to a creator that hasn’t been active on any place there game is and has a history of such long before this particular case. Which is apparently easy enough to figure out for many, many users since this keeps being pointing out. And the thread has been full for many months with these types of comments. They’ve either done so willingly or with no research as to how there money was being used.
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I agree with a lot of your points but on the Patreon on two separate occasions in June and August the dev says the update is nearly done. The Dev only makes a post when he’s put under pressure. I’d argue saying the update is nearly done keeps people subbed and when that isn’t actually true robs people of money. It is individual choice to sub or not but the Dev isn’t held accountable for what they say and in reality if they don’t release this update they’ve scammed people from June. Promising a product saying it’s nearly done and then going half a year with one post in between saying it’s nearly done again is still misleading people so that they stay subbed.
People do sub to the Patreon by choice but i’d argue a lot of people stay subbed is due to the promise that the update is coming. It was only when people said they were leaving in August that Bobo then put out another update saying it’s nearly done only to disappear for another three months.
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Could someone who has the more expensive subscription that requires Bobo to talk to you not ask about the progress of the game? That way we could be sure that it’s not just him not seeing that people are tired of not hearing from him.
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A lot of things being pointed out always assume that the dev knows what happens in this thread and on patreon without any evidence of such. That they are watching but not saying anything until something happens. Which they then need to go into damage control over.
From that perspective if it was all true would make anything seem like a scam, sure. But the reality is no one even knows if the dev logs in to patron and looks at anything. Or if they look at the email associated with their patron.
August is one month after the month window of June-July they had planned and thought the update was going to be done by. That is what they stated and to me they made a post that next month because of missing that window. If you look back at the page on the dev often missed their own self set windows for release. Often giving away the update to those that were subbed for the month(s) that the update was intended to come out by.
We can both speculate as to what the devs intentions are and if they are secretly observing everything and not responding but it would be just that speculation. The truth is no one knows what’s going on. I don’t particularly think the update is just going to drop and I’m not sure the project is being worked on at all anymore. But calling it out as a scam and that this was all some big brain masterminded way to take advantage of the community is too much of a leap to make without the sufficient evidence that claim requires.
If you go back beyond this current update the dev has said that an update is close to ready and it’s not released for a period of time then as well. This isn’t the first instance of this. As time goes on the time between the updates has increased each time.
I’m not trying to defend any behavior on the devs end they got themselves into this situation but spreading misinformation is dangerous and making speculative leaps can be just as harmful. If the intent about any of this is to draw attention for others to beware of the devs possible inactivity and cation support to save hardships and people’s money. I’m all for it. But outright referring to what has happened as a planned scam as if it’s an established fact is misleading .
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