Hello, I just recently became interested in your game. I noticed that your game can be downloaded for free on other sites, in simple words, your game has been spiraled. I'm wondering how you feel about this. To be honest, I didn't download the game from third-party sites because I was afraid that I would download some kind of virus to my PC if I succumbed to the temptation.
Oh I'm aware. The reality is there isn't a lot I can do about it: I don't have tens of thousands of dollars I can shovel into a team of lawyers to constantly play wack-a-mole with these sites, and even if I did, that would only have a limited effect. But the reality is ALSO that games tend to make most of their money on release, and most people just buy it on release rather than waiting, even a little, for a pirated copy to come out. Buying is more convenient: you don't have to go looking for a good source, fuck around with shady download sites, and then repeat all that when new content comes out. You can just go to itch and hit download.
I would also say that at least in the US, this is a VERY affordable game, which helps. The $80+ price tags a lot of professional games have now are a huge pain point, and undoubtedly fuel increased piracy (or even worse, just total dis-interest), but if you're not homeless you can probably afford to drop $10 to get a couple days worth of horny entertainment.
The other advantage I have is that my work lies squarely in the furry fandom, and the fandom is crazy, in both good and bad ways. But one of the GOOD ways is that they are VERY willing to buy things and support creators, so if you give them something that's actually WORTH buying, even better. You're definitely going to have a market. A LOT of the people in the fandom both have money to spend (on non-essential stuff) and are happy to actually spend it, which is an increasingly rare thing in the current national and global situation.
And although it's almost cliche at this point, Gabe was right: what matters isn't how many people pirate a game, but how many people buy it. So far, enough have to allow my life to transform from horrible to manageable, and when 3 finally releases I may manage to reach "Kind of mostly alright."
4 days ago(+1)
I just typed the name of the game into the browser search engine for fun to see what it would give me besides your game page on itch.io . I didn't think that games with itch.io They are also susceptible to piracy, as are games from Steam. However, this piracy can be justified, because some people cannot buy the game not because of financial problems, but simply because payment systems are unavailable depending on the country. For example, I am from Russia and I cannot use PayPal because it cannot be registered in Russian, only in other CIS countries. I can't even pay for a subscription to SubscribeStar.Adult is not easy because payment systems are unavailable, but simply because SS itself does not allow me to do this
I thought I saw that you wrote that you are ready to give access keys to the game if someone really does not have the opportunity to buy the game in the usual way, I would like to discuss this with you on this topic, but in a more private setting. Do you have a discord or other social media?
I assume by your user name you may be in the fandom: do you have an FA account? If so, you can drop me a note there, I'm just "bitshift".
I will point out a few things as well that may be useful. First, my Substar page is under .art rather than .adult, as it contains no actual humans. This is a split substar did a while ago for various reasons. Second, in addition to the typical credit card payments, Substar also now has a "wallet" feature that can be be filled with various means, including crypto. I know this is a big hassle, and a lot of people don't want to mess with it or are unable to, and I'm also not sure if Substar is simply ip-banning Russian use at the moment, but I thought it might be worth pointing out. Regardless, drop me a note on FA if you can and we can talk further there.
But yes, obviously if people are literally unable to buy my games due to thoroughly enforced international sanctions, I have no problem with them pirating at that point.
2 days ago (+1)
In fact, I wrote to you a long time ago in the FA, my account is named Bendy (please do not watch my favs), you will see a comment on your FA page. I also decided to check if your nickname in FA matches any discord account and entered your nickname with FA into the friends search bar and he found an account with such a nickname, the only thing I could do after that was send a friend request to this account and that's it, he doesn't accept messages. I do not know if this is your account or not, it's just an incredible coincidence.
Edit: I noticed how you wrote to me on FA that you don't have a discord, then the situation with that account from the discord becomes more mysterious.