Is there a way to, per say, continuously change the link every couple of days or something to avoid it getting stolen? Or used else ware? (I’m not too sure if this is possible but it should work right?) maybe via a bot or a code that automatically does it for you?
Knowing the internet, piracy is almost inevitable. Getting to obsessed with trying to stop it entirely will just lead to everyone losing (fafcomics for example) I and I’m willing to bet many other patrons as well as the staff of this site would be willing to give more money to the project to offset the losses from piracy.
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I too am willing to do so!
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I would pay a bit more to offset the damage caused by disrespectful ass-hats. Tiggertoo puts a ton of effort into this and 3D assets cost money, as he’s explained in detail before. Not to mention that a game like this doesn’t come along often.
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The game has been pirated? Really?? My gosh not even small niche games remain untouched by these assholes…
I know I have said I don’t support unfinished projects anymore but now I’m seriously considering throwing in a few bucks once 0.6 is released, just because of this BS.
Truly disgusting
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After looking into it, I saw a repeating pattern in names… I think it’s one guy that did it, and an a**hole at that!
REDACTED SITE NAME TO MAKE IT HARDER TO FIND has no respect for requests to not pirate games. LITERALLY every game on patreon is pirated on REDACTED. There’s nothing anyone can do to stop it, other than making a game so terrible it has 0 fans.
I hope tiggertoo changes his mind. He has a lot of loyal fans and supporters. If he doesn’t change his mind though, 0.6 is likely to be the last version 
I’ve never seen anyone successfully ask REDACTED to stop pirating their games.
If a dev releases their work in tiers, like tier1 patreon patron’s one week, tier2 the next week, tier3 the next week, and then publicly available for everyone like a month after release… that does often cause the pirate to wait a week or two.
At this point though leaked a copy of the game that’s like 3 months old. There’s just no way to stop a website entirely devoted to piracy from doing that. There are tens of thousands of games on that site.
I had hoped the fact that this game has ZERO hardcore porn in it, would stop them. REDACTED is supposed to be a website for pirating hardcore porn games. Since this game is more softcore life sim, rather than hardcore visual novel, I had hoped they’d just never get interested in it, but I guess they did
edit:
oh, one thing you could do, and some devs have done before, is, send every single patreon patron a direct message with a link to the game. And create a unique copy of the game for each and every one of them. then hide their username somewhere in the game. so when they leak the game, you can just ban them from your patreon.
that might work. however the only cases in which I’ve seen this work are comics like those done by faf and myfetishsituation and… they had to ban like HALF their supporters or MORE and they probably cost themselves more than they profited… but if you really hate piracy that much, that is an option. find a way to make the game files unique to each and every patron, direct message those patrons unique links, and then start banning the leakers.
edit2:
Personally I think the best solution is to just switch to the standard patreon model, where the game is just free to all like 3-4 weeks after release. Yes it feels bad. However it is good advertising and many devs garner more and more fans using this method. Essentially the only way to prevent leaks is to a) try to ban half your patrons or b) give the game away a short while after giving it to paid fans, because pirates are less likely to pirate something that will be free soon anyways.
edit3:
I deleted the name of the website that leaks pirated games, to make it harder to find, unfortunately it’s pretty well known and easy to find, but at least I’m not going to help anyone find it.
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The funny thing is that I have willingly paid 5 bucks for each update. I had no idea people were pirating this game. Though even if the thought of your work getting pirated makes it hard to focus, it’s still hard to deny that there are still people who are supporting you to make your work which can still serve as motivation to continue making it.
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Agreed. Sadly, there is no infallible way to avoid piracy (not even major videogame companies can fend it off); although, @namad 's suggestion would at least help in identifying where the rotten apples are.
I’ve gotta say piracy in the case of this game is particularly shitty, though. You would think choosing between paying 5 bucks and forcing the game to go into an indefinite hiatus would be a no-brainer. But, then again, there will always be a prick…
If paying more for a higher tier would help to solve the losses despite the leaky assholes around, I’d be happy to increase my contribution too.
That’s true. Piracy will always be a thing. But doesn’t patreon kind of circumvent that a bit? Regardless of whether people pirate the game or not, the creator still gets paid to make the game. The people who actually lose the most out of this would be the patrons themselves. Since they have to pay for something that others are stealing for free.
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Hmm, yeah, that is an idea. Maybe tiggertoo could just stop doing updates? Then release the final game? That’d be betting than closing the project entirely on a cliffhanger.
I do worry though that if he stops doing updates until the final release, a lot of his patrons will leave and just come back to buy the final game. Which might also sap motivation. I really hope he finds a way to move forward, he has many loyal fans.
Patreon isn’t really meant to be a store (although many people use it that way), it’s meant to replicate the ancient concept of being a patron of the arts. When some rich noble in the year 1475 paid an artist to create a masterful sculpture garden or whatever he didn’t necessarily sell those sculptures sometimes he just wanted to pay for them to be created (to his glory or some nonsense).
That’s why I’ve been subbed on patreon even in months there is no release, because I see myself as supporting the creation of a game I want to see get created (I think I’ve been subbed for 6 months already now? and seen 2 releases in that time). I’ll end up paying more than the 20$ the dev says he thinks he would sell the game for, by being subbed for 6+ months. I don’t mind though because I know without the support of loyal fans the game won’t exist.
edit:
Hmm, one thing that might save this project, MAYBE, and might get tiggertoo to change his mind? If somehow 0.6 DOES get pirated, but then before he has time to cancel his project and close his patreon he gets a large wave of new fans? If he magically doubled his fanbase maybe he’d change his mind?
That also might actually happen, 0.6 looks like it’s gonna be amazing, and 0.2 was the only publicity he had before and 0.2 was much less complete…
That’s what I’m going to start wishing for! That’s the only path forward I can currently imagine that doesn’t end in sadness.
I’ll still gladly pay for each update when they come out. My personal policy for piracy was just to make my work free for everyone and only charge for commissions and maybe in the future, access to unfinished chapters or my writing process when I get that far. You can’t steal my product or my money if it’s free. But on a more serious note @tiggertoo we appreciate you. I know this may sound obvious but as a creator, I’ve learned that this is something we need to hear to keep our motivation to continue our work. Sure there will be people who will try to steal your hard work and effort. There will be people who will gladly kick you while you’re down and take advantage of your kindness. But never forget the people who care about you and want to see you succeed. Even if it’s just one single person or hundreds of people. It can make all the difference and give you the power to keep moving forward.
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Is Gumroad any harder to pirate from? I swear I remember it being more secure.
gumroad isn’t any more “secure” it’s just so much less popular that products on gumroad are often too unfamous to be pirated :-/
Appreciation may be part of it but the monetary loss caused by piracy seems to be the bigger issue, both because it costs money to produce a quality product and because his time and effort as a creator deserve compensation. I really think he could afford to ask more for the latest version of the game without losing those who have been committed and maybe that would offset the loss of whatever percentage of pirating is inevitable. Maybe that’s overly simplistic…
Hey, if Tiggertoo has to take the game down, he should keep his Patreon up. I’d still happily pay him each month while he works on it.
Also, what program is used to make the images?
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he uses daz3d, all the VNs out there with this type of art use daz3d it’s like 100 times easier than something like blender and 100 times cheaper and easier than something like maya.
daz3d was formed about a decade ago when the poser content developers had a revolution and left poser and made their own competing product.
side note: daz3d is iray based, which means nvidia based, which means no AMD.
I’m sure that side note means something, but I have no idea what!
Thznk you very much for the information.
I believe the side note refers to the graphics hardware type that DAZ3D will work with.
Damn it all, pirates are going to kill the game. I never thought I’d say this… But is there any way to add DRM?