Sorry for the somewhat weird title, but I wanted to ask something to you guys. Is it just me or this entire website has been kinda empty lately? I’m mostly talking about the games, there’s been a couple of neat releases for the past few months but not that much compared to last year. Some really good titles like Feeder Fantasy, Olive And The Ruby Bra, Big Aspirations, etc. also haven’t had any recent updates (at least that I know of). Do you think it’ll just be a temporary thing?
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I dont know anything eighter but i have the feeling that maybe discord is more popular than this platform…
Correct me if i am wrong…
I would imagine it’s a combination of people having a lot of IRL commitments to prioritise and the upcoming gain jam keeping people from investing a ton of time into game dev at the moment. No point burning yourself out to push an update if you’re then going to burn even more to participate in the jam.
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Been feeling this for about a year now. Like you said, some cool projects here and there, but nothing close to the scale of the Weighing Game or Fill Me Up. Some of the big titles haven’t had an update in months, some even years. (Not that it’s an issue, I promise! 
)
Not to complain either but—(proceeds to complain)—sometimes it upsets me when half of the new posts are ideas for games (that someone wants another person to make for them), and AI chatbots someone “made.” No hate but it gives me some false hope at times.
I’ll second what Wulf_ said too; if it weren’t for school and work I’d have time to work on the game I started some time ago. I have a feeling this year has been tougher than many people realize or want to admit. Paying for things has only gotten harder. I haven’t had time to take a good look at myself in forever.
But hey, hopefully it’s just a phase! Gain jam is right around the corner. Fall and winter tend to be popular time for devs for some reason (it’s cold as heck).
And for anyone that needs to hear it, shit’s been hard. Don’t beat yourself up over it, we all got this <3
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I think a better title would’ve been: “Why aren’t people making games that I specifically like? Why aren’t devs that work for nothing in return constantly updating their games? Is this site dead or something??”
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the games that i keep waiting for update are, fill me up like someone already said, the weighting game, apostles, feeder fantasy and maybe that’s everything, i can’t argue if the site is going through a hard time with the devs mainly 'cause i have recently discovered that the fetish comunity has games, so sorry guys but for a newbie like me, there’s actually a lot BUT yeah for what i saw a lot of good proyects haven’t had updates in months and it’s kinda sad, especially with fill me up… that game is a true masterpiece visual novel
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There’s a discord? I had no idea
Yeah it does seem kinda quiet on here for the past year or so, but I appreciate what we have so far
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Combination of factors at play in my opinion:
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“Return to Office” orders. A lot of part-time game development work was done at home in between other stuff, and lots and lots of people have had their “work from home” days pared back bit-by-bit over the last several years. Nobody’s working on this stuff in an office if they want to keep their jobs, and that guarantees eight hours (plus commute and getting-ready-time) where people have to focus elsewhere. Plus this is hard shit to do a good job of, in many cases acting like a second job instead of a hobby, and it makes sense that a lot of people won’t want to do it for free in what’s supposed to be their limited “free” time.
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Decline of Patreon and other financial-reward opportunities. Speaking of “doing it for free,” it’s getting harder to make it financially worthwhile too. Twitter is basically locked down and generally unpleasant to try and access now, which limits social media advertisement to find people willing to pay for this stuff. Beyond that, payment processors keep buckling further and further to pressure from groups trying to ban the sale and distribution of anything classified as “adult.” Also, general inflationary pressures are forcing people to cut out “fun” expenditures. With all of these factors combined, there’s little room for newcomers to be able to justify working on something hard for free.
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AI is mediocre, but easy. Game dev is hard. Even “simple” systems like Twine and Ren’Py require lots of work to implement in a way that’s fun and entertaining. 3D modeling is literally a profession. Coding is literally a profession. Art is literally a profession. Writing is literally a profession. They all take time and effort to improve at if you want to produce something really amazing. Or you can hit up an AI chatbot or AI image-generator and get something mediocre immediately. Is it any wonder why people keep posting chatbots or making things mostly composed of AI imagery? It’s not great, but it gives instant results and thus instant rewards. Compared to “work a second job for no money, on the off-chance you produce a masterpiece of fringe fetish material” it’s a no-brainer for most people. But you’ll never exceed mediocrity that way. You’ll only ever be as good as the AI.
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This is also an incredibly subjective topic, in my opinion. There have been and continue to be plenty of new game releases week after week, long running projects that get updates, frequent or otherwise, new games by devs with one or more under their belt, and topics constantly being bumped, talked in, and discussions had. If you avoid paid or supported time exclusive games this can compound the issue of that feeling.
Now, if you don’t like some games that have come out and they are not for you, it’s easy to understand not including things like that in your view of “good” new releases which would further push you into the idea that there’s a “lack” of new or good stuff.
Some of the games being mentioned in this topic didn’t start out as big smash hits on a single release; it’s easy to view something as good objectively that has been around for years at this point regardless of update frequency or successive releases. The weighting game for instance, 0.1 and 0.2 looked quite different from how it is today. I’m sure there would be quite a few that would overlook or write it off in its early stages compared to how it is now. This is just how game development works. Most people are doing this as a hobby while working full time jobs, updates come out, games get developed. attempts are made, when the fledgling developer has time as life happens.
The fact of the matter is between 2019 and 2022 there was a good chance a lot of people had some more time on their hands than they do now. Which easily leads people to dip their toes into something they have little or no experience in. Especially when being inspired by other good games out there. Game dev takes a lot of time, learning, and patience among other things. “Good” things don’t just appear out of thin air and everyone will have different opinions and tastes on games. I personally think the idea that games have dropped off is a subjective one based on personal tastes rather than an overarching trend and I would say the site’s analytics point to that.
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I think it has something to do with the Patreon thing, where they stopped allowing nsfw content.
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Patreon hasn’t stopped allowing NSFW content. NSFW content is allowed and fine on patreon some fetish content that depicts gore, violence, self harm, non-consensual acts or things that are normally illegal have been having accounts closed, content removed or shut down. But that is nothing ground breaking.
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Krodmandoon said it , excuse me but the topic is very subjective.
There are many games that have shown or released here. And for other games that hasn’t had an update , we have to remember that most games here aren’t done by big companies or groups, they are being developed by one person or sometimes 2 or more. It takes a lot of time , especially if you want to do everything yourself and some even want to make a good game rather than just satisfy an specific fetish. We also need to remember that some games are being made for free.
I myself i’m developing a game, but like many others i have other responsabilites to take care first. You can’t expect new games or updates constantly because game developers have a life. I wish it was that easy to develop a game , but is not.
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I barely put any thought into this when I first saw it, but after reading through everyone’s comments yeah of course there’s that whole “not trapped in my house for several months anymore” factor that has led to a general slowdown of output. Assuming @Morte_Nera 's account creation at the end of 2021 is around when they started using this site then they joined at pretty much the peak of activity, so seeing the site return to its regular (though still growing!) activity could be seen as a “rough patch”.
Though like Krod said, it’s hardly as if new games aren’t still being made, or existing ones not being updated. People in general just have less free time now so a return to that peak ~2021 would likely require a surge of new developers, which is exactly what led to that peak in the first place.
And if this is just a case of new games not being of particular interest to you… yeah even I can’t play devil’s advocate to that one. People just make games about whatever they want to make games about, whether that happens to cater towards your interests is entirely up to chance, but certainly not indicative of a rough patch.
I still stand my my original point though, the month or so leading up to a jam always has a lull in developer activity as they prepare for the two week bonanza.
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I partially think its just a bit of everything as you mentioned.
And do forgive me for blowing my own horn but I did just release a big FatFur TTRPG last week and hopefully will continue by supplying supplements within the year.
Still, I also think it could be that a lot of people who worked on Fat projects are working on other ‘non fat’ projects as well?
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I don’t know about other developers, but for me the only reason for no updates is money. I wasted a month on learning unreal engine, made some tests: x.com and of course I didn’t earn anything that month, because I didn’t take any commissions. So, now I am working on commissions to earn money for living and don’t have time to work on game project.
Simply like that:
- Saved some money for living - got time to work on game.
- The money has run out - no time to work on game.
Some people earn money to go somewhere on vacation, while other people earn money to free up some time and spend it on game development 
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Yeah, I bet it’s really nice to put words in other people’s mouths…especially because I’ve NEVER said something like that. Calm down with the hyperboles, thanks
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Some other people have touched on it but I thought I would share my thoughts, since my game was one of the ones mentioned. One thing I got praised for with my game was the frequency of updates at the beginning, and but since then they have slowed considerably, which is due to a number of factors.:
- I work a full time job and spend an additional 20 hours a week streaming, this has always been true for me, but after forgoing sleep for a couple weeks at the beginning of my game development I realized how unhealthy that was and decided to slow my pace for my own well being.
- The scale of my game has been steadily increasing and each subsequent release requires more work than the last, plus I wanted to put in the effort to ensure more stable releases, considering that my early versions of my game would come out with many bugs that I would have to spend a few days ironing out. I decided that was unacceptable.
- I most likely could have put out multiple releases with the amount of content that I have already created, but I decided to hold off and make this release the last major one.
Now I can’t speak for everyone, but this has been my experience and I wouldn’t be shocked to learn that others have similar things going on in their life that demand their time. As someone who currently does this as a passion project and is not asking for compensation in return, I do not feel bad about taking the time necessary for my work, and I suspect that is also true for others that are taking on development as a hobby. It may feel like a dry spell, but I’ve been on this forum for years at this point and it always comes back around.
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My observation is games are being made at the same rate as ever rather the number of users on here has drastically increased over the years and there are a lot more threads with other topics being made, that obscures the number of games being worked on and their respective threads. To be clear that is not a bad thing, and i welcome all the new threads and discussions, rather it makes finding games a little harder having to wade through all the other threads. You could say weight gaming has accumulated some fulff/weight of its own over time, that the games are buried under.
P.S. Maybe we could get some additional categories for threads, to help better sort them to allow people to find what there looking for.
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Bar the streaming, this pretty much sums me up too 
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