I don't know if most of you participate in others forums and already, but the page that shouldn't be named and starts with P, decided to ban all incest content.

Some games with huge support are already blocked, like Big Brother.

I believe this news are of interest of game creators for two reasons:
1. If you go for incest, start looking for another crowfunding solution. I don't use, so I'm fine.
2. Another crowdfunding solution will definitely come up. Although I am interested in the theme, there are hundreds of people that love it, and invest hard on it. It's an good opportunity specially for advanced creators, to be part of it or at least influence in the very beginning.

Yes. It seems Patreon took hard measures now, after giving the Creators a delay (1 month? 2 months?) to reconsider their content.
It's unfortunate for the sake of creative liberty but I can't blame Patreon for deciding their boundaries.

Are Patreon US based? If so do they do they refuse to allow "nipple display" like the Japanese insist on pixellated genitalia, or various countries and states seem to think under 18 sex is illicit, despite Jerry Lee Lewis legally marrying a 14 year old in his home state? In the UK 16 is the age of consent but it's not a vast time ago that 13 or 14 was considered perfectly normal and 21 meant a well brought up girl was in danger of being a spinster for the rest of her days.

What degree of "incest" do they ban? What about brothers and sisters with no consanguinity at all like Barry Allen and Iris in The Flash? That fictional relationship doesn't stop some self-righteous fans getting all hot under the collar about a perfectly reasonable relationship. My own view is that close blood relationships are probably unwise but are understandable in isolated situations -- I would feel uncomfortable with first cousins but not with more diluted blood relationships.

Greebo wrote:re Patreon US based? If so do they do they refuse to allow "nipple display" like the Japanese insist on pixellated genitalia, or various countries and states seem to think under 18 sex is illicit, despite Jerry Lee Lewis legally marrying a 14 year old in his home state? In the UK 16 is the age of consent but it's not a vast time ago that 13 or 14 was considered perfectly normal and 21 meant a well brought up girl was in danger of being a spinster for the rest of her days.

What degree of "incest" do they ban? What about brothers and sisters with no consanguinity at all like Barry Allen and Iris in The Flash? That fictional relationship doesn't stop some self-righteous fans getting all hot under the collar about a perfectly reasonable relationship. My own view is that close blood relationships are probably unwise but are understandable in isolated situations -- I would feel uncomfortable with first cousins but not with more diluted blood relationships.

They are US based. California based to be precise.
Patreon legitimately decided to not allow certain themes on their site. I don't know what they consider incest or not. It's irrelevant in a way. They have the liberty do disallow any content that has the colour green if they wish so.

Greebo wrote:What degree of "incest" do they ban?

As stated by @Mortze, Patreon has the legal right to refuse their funding service based on whatever criteria they wish as long as it doesn't contradict the relevant US based discrimination laws.

But to answer your question: They use a definition that include most legal family associations which include both blood based and non-blood based, although it is unclear how many levels of "X removed" they include.

eg. you can't get around it by using "step" or "in-law" associations, but it is unclear if you can have a sexual relationship with your 3rd cousin four times removed.

Here what they say:
"I wanted to provide you our definition of incest. We define incest as sexual activity between family members or relatives. We also include larger extended family, which means that we don’t only look at the blood line, but also stepfamily members whether or not they are bound by law. If, for example, the characters call each other sister and brother or mother and son, we will review the content as incest."

You can follou the discussion here https://*****.com/threads/big-brother ... /page-1038

No doubt they have complete freedom to define their rules, but I get annoyed with a rule change. This guy for example invested a lot of time and effort based on this platform, 2837 followers, and now have to throw it away. The most popular adult game on Patreon is completely about incest, 7.636 investors. I understand that incest is morally reprehensible, but put it aside with rape that's actually a crime sounds weird to me. Sounds like censorship based on moral judgment.

What will stop them from tomorrow they decide to ban any adult content?

But anyway, my point here is that all these creators and their public, will have to found a new place, this movement maybe can be a great opportunity for any web portal.

The more I think about it the more I believe that Patreon didn't anticipated the huge amount of deviant sex games that would use its platform. They didn't felt the need to issue rules about incest and bestiality because they didn't see it coming.
But we all know how populated with amateur (some really amateur) game creators it has been in just a year or two.
Maybe it has come to a point where when people talked about Patreon it was like:
- "Hey, have you heard about Patreon?"
- "Yeah, is that the site to support really weird porn content and games?"

Patreon would certainly have prefer to be known as a site that mediates the support for art and not other less prestigious things.
They found themselves obligated to issue these rules to filter out some content they don't want to be affiliated to.
Unfortunately, since they can't just say "Creator A, your incest game sucks so you're out, but creator B, your incest game is solid so you can stay" they had to opt to send away the few good creators to get rid of the majority of not-so-good ones.

I personally have Patreon in very high regard. I believe that they have tried their best to help creators all around the world. I also believed that some people have abused their good will.
Unlike Paypal, Patreon has always been very diplomatic and eager to ease the transition process for the creators. They gave the creators a chance to change their content. They still do give that chance. Patreon isn't saying "We don't want you as a creator." It is saying "We just want you to create content we feel comfortable with".

That opens a second line of thought. Are these incest/bestiality games creators only capable of doing games with that theme? Can't they do other erotic content?
Do they do incest/bestiality stuff because they want it or because that's what patrons want more?

Mortze wrote:That opens a second line of thought. Are these incest/bestiality games creators only capable of doing games with that theme? Can't they do other erotic content?
Do they do incest/bestiality stuff because they want it or because that's what patrons want more?

According to the stats page that MaxCarna posted in other thread, I assume the latter is correct. But obviously these creators don't have any moral issue regarding that theme

IMO all this is happening because some devs, maybe alot, went too far. Let's face it there was an emulation, a competition who would find the most alluring title for their games and making most provocative advertising renders for their patreon pages. And let`s say the word "milking" has been mentioned more than a few times by the players, and not always without a reason.

But i don`t get why all this is such a surprise because from what i`ve read the rules were always there. Some devs chose to ignore them and Patreon turned a blind eye to it, at least till now. I don't know if Patreon reacted only now because it just went too far or because they grew bigger and want to distance themselves from certain taboo themes. Either way you can`t blame them for imposing their rules which were there in the first place. If you have a look at the Patreon pages of the devs who have been respecting the "old" rules the whole time they had nothing to change after the "new" rules were imposed.

Also following the discussions it was fun to read the general "rumors" and "solutions". For example one of the first is they are taking down only small patatoes devs and not disturbing any milking cow. Now it seems that the biggest milking cow and cow milking game is on the list, or for example the idea to replace the full titles with acronyms and make only a few cosmetic changes and some superficial modifications because the Patreon wouldn`t look at the content but just the titles and game descriptions, or presenting a bogus version of the game and posting the link of the "real" game on the Patreon page etc. Not to mention the rumors that "they are taking down all the adult content".

These rules maybe bad or maybe very bad but if you accept them and then ignore them or try to fool the others you can`t complain when you get busted.

I'm saying this not because i hate incest games or any other fetish and i'm glad they're shutting them down. I'm not a fan of censorship (except for cp), i've played many of these games and even liked a few and have been following a couple of them. But from all this shitstorm are suffering even those devs who respected the rules, some of whom games i like, and i cannot blame Patreon about it.

Crane wrote:But i don`t get why all this is such a surprise because from what i`ve read the rules were always there. Some devs chose to ignore them and Patreon turned a blind eye to it, at least till now. I don't know if Patreon reacted only now because it just went too far or because they grew bigger and want to distance themselves from certain taboo themes. Either way you can`t blame them for imposing their rules which were there in the first place. If you have a look at the Patreon pages of the devs who have been respecting the "old" rules the whole time they had nothing to change after the "new" rules were imposed.

I don't recall the explicit non incest/bestiality terms when I first made my Patreon page. I think those are recent updates to the terms.
I read somewhere a comment of one affected dev's patron that simply said that Patreon is anticipating huge losses. There were many deviant devs and projects, even things like sexcam shows that totally deviated from Patreon's initial intent. One thing is to make art and get patrons to support your art. Another is to abuse the system. I can't see much art in webcam shows.
What if an influential blogger or journalist decided to say that Patreon allows content like incest, bestiality, dubious games where the characters seem like 10 years old. Patreon has become a huge player in this type of funding business, and one blog, or bad press, could simply destroy its business platform.

Crane wrote:Not to mention the rumors that "they are taking down all the adult content".

I don't think they'll come to that. At least I hope. I don't see them removing good artistic content like nude photography, or painting, or erotic novels. Art and eroticism have always been together. I see Patreon start filtering what's art and what's trash instead. I do hope our Patreon project won't be an issue. I've considered having a try at the incest theme but I was much fortunately convinced not to do it.

Mortze wrote:I don't recall the explicit non incest/bestiality terms when I first made my Patreon page. I think those are recent updates to the terms.
I read somewhere a comment of one affected dev's patron that simply said that Patreon is anticipating huge losses. There were many deviant devs and projects, even things like sexcam shows that totally deviated from Patreon's initial intent. One thing is to make art and get patrons to support your art. Another is to abuse the system. I can't see much art in webcam shows.
What if an influential blogger or journalist decided to say that Patreon allows content like incest, bestiality, dubious games where the characters seem like 10 years old. Patreon has become a huge player in this type of funding business, and one blog, or bad press, could simply destroy its business platform.

Someone posted the old rules on a forum and there were the "four forbidden" taboos, incest, bestiality, underage etc.

They always tend to forget that Patreon is a business just as their games. Every decent business has his own rules and his own policies.

Mortze wrote:I don't think they'll come to that. At least I hope. I don't see them removing good artistic content like nude photography, or painting, or erotic novels. Art and eroticism have always been together. I see Patreon start filtering what's art and what's trash instead. I do hope our Patreon project won't be an issue. I've considered having a try at the incest theme but I was much fortunately convinced not to do it.

I don't think they'll come to that either, at least there is no sign of it. That's why i called it rumor. I don't find myself qualified to define what is art and what is trash but i think this will be more a financial matter, someone will survive and someone will sink. And i don't know for sure that only bad devs will sink and only good devs will survive, but i wish it to be so.

But in your case, i think in the long term probably this will have a positive effect on your Patreon ongoing/future projects, and i really hope it does.

I read frustrated patrons telling Patreon's is violating the right of speech, doing censorship, etc...
They seem to forget that the right of speech is something that must exist for Citizen/Government relationships, not in the private sphere. Patreon is a private company and has the full right to deny anyone's speech, and to censor any content it wants. I won't let anyone speak about anything in my own house. If I don't like it I'll ask them to leave my house and go speak somewhere else. They talk about petitions, they talk about sueing Patreon. I don't think they know what they're talking about.

Crane wrote:Someone posted the old rules on a forum and there were the "four forbidden" taboos, incest, bestiality, underage etc.

They always tend to forget that Patreon is a business just as their games. Every decent business has his own rules and his own policies.

If that's the case then yes, developers, and their patrons, can't point any finger at Patreon.

Crane wrote:I don't think they'll come to that either, at least there is no sign of it. That's why i called it rumor. I don't find myself qualified to define what is art and what is trash but i think this will be more a financial matter, someone will survive and someone will sink. And i don't know for sure that only bad devs will sink and only good devs will survive, but i wish it to be so.

Yes. Patreon is a business, not charity. They want to make a cool platform for art creators but they also want to be profitable and have their salaries paid. There's few things worse for business than bad press in current days. One puritan blog about Patreon from a conservative but influential person could lead to a very harmful public relations problem for Patreon. Since NSFW devs are a small percentage of Patreon's creators and artists, they are doing a preventive strike here. If I was running Patreon I would probably do the very same thing.

Something seems to be happening on DeviantArt as well.

Can see atleast one photographer I follow, has deleted pics to avoid getting in trouble. (Yes, he's doing nudeart, but very sober and artistic pictures.)

Mortze wrote:That opens a second line of thought. Are these incest/bestiality games creators only capable of doing games with that theme? Can't they do other erotic content?
Do they do incest/bestiality stuff because they want it or because that's what patrons want more?

This is a big line of thought that includes others questions. For example, maybe they should have smallers games with begin, middle and end, instead of just one huge game being developed across years. The impact of a turn over now would be much smaller, it would be easier to adapt.
Being stuck on the same story for so long potentially created a comfort zone, get away now will be harder. This cause another problem, many users complain about lack of perspective, that the story lost the goals.

Patrons major interests is another huge question. Incest theme exploded in the last years, not only in games. You can take a look on 8muses the most viewed arts are related to it. Furry games are another phenomenon, one of the former greatest Patreon's games were Breeding Season, and now there is this Monster Girl Island. I know that many creators like to see themselves as artists, but who is in this for commercial purposes will not ignore those facts. I don't look to this people as ganancious people, some of them, just need to survive somewhere in the world.

Crane wrote: But i don`t get why all this is such a surprise because from what i`ve read the rules were always there

They updated their rules on december, specifically Community Guidelines, the Terms of Use remains the same.

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I'm probing some of the biggest games:

One of them, Dreams of Desire, just changed the names inside the game, like "mom" become "landlady", all the images are the same. It seems to be working. There is a patch to rename everything. If this is the way, honestly it is a very hypocrite measure from Patreon.

Big Brother's creator didn't decide what to do yet. Summertime Saga seems not to have been bothered yet. Dating My Daughter seems to be shut down, with this title it would hardly scape.

But let's look forward, not for problems, but to solutions.

Indeed, Patreon is a private institution, they can make anything they want. Also creators and users can abandon them, anytime they want.

Advertising never was a service that Patreon delivered for adult games, they were always hidden on searches. What they deliver to adult games's creators? A worldwide payment system, blog space, media server... What cann't be done by an adult game portal?

With the crypto currencies explosion, what about a Patreon's like portal where you receive ethereum, zcash... ?