Patreon Is Hardening Their 'Adult Content' Guidelines. Discussion Thread

[Rocklance]

Jeez, how many game developers hav to change their games contents if the action continue..

 

[Pantisocrat]

The larger devs should organise and approach sites like manyvids and clips4sale. There's no reason for those sites to care that the content being offered is a game instead of a video clip.

 

[Jeff Steel]

Patreon is an American company. In general America tends to have more permissive free speech laws than other western countries, to be honest. In much of Europe open race supremacist speech is blanket banned while absolutely legal in America. Obscenity is indeed the legal construct used to prosecute most illicit content. Mostly the government only seems to go after simulated **********, the most notable example of this being their prosecution of Max Hardcore. A few years before that a guy named Mike Diana was prosecuted on a local level for some pretty gross zines/minicomics. IIRC his "Boiled Angel" had some sexual violence peppered in too, though I've never managed to get my hands on a copy.

Basically, in America a work can be obscene if it depicts sexual activity in a prurient and offensive manner and it's devoid of artistic, literary, scientific or political value. Technically this is all balanced on whether a community would find it offensive, but that's kind out the window in the internet age. Basically that means artistic works where the sole focus is on providing sexual gratification can be regulated.

In general prosecutions are rare nowadays. Things like "Howl" by Allen Ginsburg or "Naked Lunch" by William S. Burroughs were the target of a ton of lawsuits in the 50's and 60's. They're largely the reason we have even semi-firm rules on what qualifies as legally obscene.

The thing is Patreon can pick and choose what they want to publish on their platform. This has nothing to do with obscenity. They are exercising their right to free speech by restricting what content can be available on their platform. There's a few reasons they would want to do this; optics, PR, legitimacy or they I guess they could fear running afoul of obscenity (probably not).

The real problem is the ecosystem and community of adult games has grown out and around Patreon. I'd rather somebody else step up and create a new ecosystem for adult games but even if it materializes it would face systemic problems. The inertia surrounding Patreon is huge but at least it doesn't keep the same kind of contractual stranglehold Amazon holds on it's Kindle author's throats. Thus far there haven't been any serious competitors to Patreon but we'll see.

Patreon is based in San Francisco. Patreon isn’t doing this in a vacuum; it has worked with pay systems (PayPal, credit car companies, etc to my understanding since 2016) to not have higher transaction fees attached to Adult content patron payments. Apparently, adult content online purchases have notoriously required higher transaction fees by pay services out of fraud issues (in my understanding).

So part of Patreon’s moves may be to protect that pay service relationship; and part seems to also be a move by Patreon to not support any harm to others (eg the underage & incest restrictions). There has been some argument in legal cases that even drawn art of underage sex can be used by perpetrators to indoctrinate underage persons into actually having sex. I’m not here to debate the validity of that argipument, but just point out it has been an argument of prosecutors in criminal cases and the government in civil cases on why drawn art could or,should be regulated.

 

[SeeEmilyPlay]

I think the legallity of the content has nothing to do with Patreon's actions whatsoever. Free speech does not apply here, they can choose whatever content they want on their services.

I think the big problem is fear.

They are getting bigger this means they will have to bend to the will of investors, advertisers and partners. They are so scared of the bloody southern christian soccer mom police that they want remove everything that can trigger a consumer boycot or bad press.

 

[Rocklance]

Dating my Rose
Man of the House ( From outside )
IC in Paradise (New story) [PS: IC is short for Innocent Cabbage]
Redemption [v0.71 FIXED][Mr.C]
Summertime Saga 14.5 Update patch
...

 

[anne O'nymous]

Lewdlabs (

You must be registered to see the links

) Patreon Post.
[...]
They said the problem is the fetishization of incest. So that instantly kills this discussion about adult games. (step relations are out of the question too)

Well, in fact it's not this surprising... Just found this :

You must be registered to see the links

To sum up, despite many demands, Patreon failed to act against one of their creators who called for harassment directly on his Patreon page. And now they are sued because of this.

So yes, now that their legal team is on the breach, "fetishization of incest" is a thing they don't want. They thought way too much for two weeks and now they fear the day someone will sue them because, "you see, before playing games found on your site, my husband never raped our daughter, so it's your fault". Soon, they will fear the day someone will sue them because, "you see, before playing rape games found on your site, I never raped anyone, so it's your fault if i'm in jail now". Then, the day someone will do it because, "you see, before playing bestiality games found on your site, I never looked at my cat in a sexual way, so it's your fault". And obviously, they'll also fear the day someone will do it because, "you see, before playing corruption games found on your site, I never tried to force my wife to have sex in front of all her family during thanksgiving, so it's your fault if now her and her whole family hate me and she want to divorce".
And like in the USA this kind of stupidity is legal and can even lead to a victory in justice, they now use the hammer.

 

[muttdoggy]

Yup.. "I R Stewpig" is legal and perfectly fine here in USA!! Need proof? I got you!
1- Donald J. Trump
2- Kanye West
3- The list could go on but I'd die of old age before I get finished.

Ok.. no more funnies.
It's actually true that fear of litigation is a YUUUUGE thing here in America. Look at Kanye and Donny. They're currently being sued AND they have also sued others. In fact, at last count, Donald J. Trump has been involved in over 4000+ lawsuits in over 3 decades. 1 person, 4000+ lawsuits.

 

[anne O'nymous]

It's completely out of topic but...
[note: voluntary reduced the name, please don't answer with politic it's not my intent and I'm sure that the moderators will not like it.]

[...][D. J. T.] has been involved in over 4000+ lawsuits in over 3 decades. 1 person, 4000+ lawsuits.

You are kidding, right ? Please, say that you are kidding...
According to wikipedia he's born the 14 June 1946, so he already lived 26 079 days (don't count leap years, too lazy). This mean an average of at least 1 lawsuit each 6.5 days since his birth ! More that one a week ! :hushedface: How someone can achieve this without working for the judicial system ? Is there even a single person working for the judicial system with such an average ?
And you said, "over 3 decades", so it's in fact more than twice this.:OhMyGoodness:

 

[DSSAlex]

If you question that statistic I suggest you listen to the recently released 300th episode of The Dollop. It's like 3 hours split across two episodes but anything less wouldn't tell you anything you didn't already know.

 

[tiofrodo]

It's completely out of topic but...
[note: voluntary reduced the name, please don't answer with politic it's not my intent and I'm sure that the moderators will not like it.]


You are kidding, right ? Please, say that you are kidding...
According to wikipedia he's born the 14 June 1946, so he already lived 26 079 days (don't count leap years, too lazy). This mean an average of at least 1 lawsuit each 6.5 days since his birth ! More that one a week ! :hushedface: How someone can achieve this without working for the judicial system ? Is there even a single person working for the judicial system with such an average ?
And you said, "over 3 decades", so it's in fact more than twice this.:OhMyGoodness:

Having enough misadventures with the law but also having the money to not go to jail, just see Hollywood, most cases can't even be prosecuted because of statute of limitation, we can only hope that the backlash is enough to take them into obscurity.

 

[Lewdlab]

I cannot speak for other developers, only for myself.

It came up that we are caving in to patreon's demands and don't care about our fanbase.
Well, I for one do care.

Almost every step I take on my journey as a game developer starts with the same question.
'Would the fans and supporters like it?'

With this change, I asked myself the same question and the answer was obvious. They wouldn't.
I also want to make it clear that I had a vision when I started working on this game, and it upsets me to say the least. Don't think that we don't care.
When you are busting your ass for almost a year, every single day to make the game you dreamed it to be, reading the comments and messages from the fans, seeing your actual fanbase build up from the ground up in the process, then someone comes and forces your hand to change all this, what you've been working on for so long and forces you to betray the people who are supporting you in a way...
That of course is a huge punch in the face.

Thankfully, I am not someone who would just let himself be pushed around and this is the same with the other developers I'm in contact with.
But I'm also not the hot-headed guy who would charge headfirst into the wall.
To do this right takes time.

I just wanted to put it out there, that we are not just sitting on our asses while the building is crumbling down on us.

-Dr Sin

 

[Delmach]

Thats halfway good to hear, also that others "prepare" for possible future things. But its still kinda sad, as with Patreon right now the smaller developers that arent big enough yet will probably struggle a lot more, and I already heard about completly new ones having their content/sites outright rejected. (and people caving in and changing things prematurely without Patreon saying so yet.)

And those workarounds aka mods require participants in this or other forums, which with a smaller fanbase gets more complicated.

Also dont see a reason to have any loyality to Patreon, they take money but really only offer a platform, which got big not really because of their doing (kinda like Steam), but of the content creators and fans, they dont market your game, or give you any security regarding the money sent to you, even more so since October.
Basically the whole opposite, they hide any adult content with all their means possible. Granted, they dont take a big cut like, same example, Steam does. But at least that steaming pile of .... doesn't hide your content or forces more and more morality rules on you. Both companies just let you ride their monopol until they see you as something unwanted.

And not to forget, in DoD's case, it is still using a variant of.... lets see, how to say it without really saying it.. it uses a method to tell the story in a way, or enable one fictional being in a way to let another fictional being "succumb" to the first mentioned fictional being's "ideas" of having "fun". That kinda hurt my brain, going bureacratic speech there.

Going by how not at all lenient they are in the relatedness of characters, as in not even step-anything allowed, im just praying to whatever entity it takes that all other things they dont want to see can remain active for a long time.

And for everything else, there is Masterca... uhh this forum.

 

[Dr.izzt]

Reading through a lot of this is a bit concerning. I am in the early stages of planning an development of my first game and I am not looking to approach it half-assed. I am really wondering how close to the sun should I fly while keeping my idea of a game intact. One compromise I have already thought of was to introduce the MC as an adopted family member to avoid an immediate incest red flag.
I really want to come up with and put out a quality product that I am happy with but want to make sure I will not have to completely change what I had planned from the get go just to avoid potential issues going forward.

 

[Studio Errilhl]

Reading through a lot of this is a bit concerning. I am in the early stages of planning an development of my first game and I am not looking to approach it half-assed. I am really wondering how close to the sun should I fly while keeping my idea of a game intact. One compromise I have already thought of was to introduce the MC as an adopted family member to avoid an immediate incest red flag.
I really want to come up with and put out a quality product that I am happy with but want to make sure I will not have to completely change what I had planned from the get go just to avoid potential issues going forward.

If you're thinking of doing it via Patreon, step- whatever will not fly. They will strike down just as hard. Of course, they will need to find it first, but it might happen. I would suggest something along the lines I'm creating, where you can swap out "mother" / "sister" / "my mother" / "your sister" etc. with names (hence removing any connotations to family at all) - it takes a bit of fine-tuning for the text to work like that, and you will need a lot more variables for names and pronouns, but it's completely doable.

 

[Dr.izzt]

I was thinking about it a little more and maybe just using names but not referring to them by their relationship. Make it fairly obvious but without actually writing out who that person is to you may be enough.

 

[Mikethered]

I don’t know anything about patreon but can’t you guys just use it as a means to get paid but create your own website for the downloads? Have no link to the website on the patreon page so it won’t get into trouble. Probably won’t be that easy but could work?

 

[anne O'nymous]

I don’t know anything about patreon but can’t you guys just use it as a means to get paid but create your own website for the downloads? Have no link to the website on the patreon page so it won’t get into trouble. Probably won’t be that easy but could work?

This was the first response a month ago. A lot of creators launched their own site/blog to host the content and depict the game more in depth than they were now allowed on their Patreon page.
Then, patreon stated that creators couldn't link to something containing the banned words/content. And by this they meant something like, "whatever if the page linked don't have banned content, it's not permit as long as the said banned content is somewhere on the site you link to". But well, creators, as well as the community, were hoping that they'll not start to look deep into the site.
And now their new move is to, implicitly, say that whatever the content is available directly or indirectly from the Patreon page, you can't use Patreon to fund it. And here creators are fucked. There's no way to deal with this without changing the game itself.

 

[Mikethered]

This was the first response a month ago. A lot of creators launched their own site/blog to host the content and depict the game more in depth than they were now allowed on their Patreon page.
Then, patreon stated that creators couldn't link to something containing the banned words/content. And by this they meant something like, "whatever if the page linked don't have banned content, it's not permit as long as the said banned content is somewhere on the site you link to". But well, creators, as well as the community, were hoping that they'll not start to look deep into the site.
And now their new move is to, implicitly, say that whatever the content is available directly or indirectly from the Patreon page, you can't use Patreon to fund it. And here creators are fucked. There's no way to deal with this without changing the game itself.

So only way if they wanted to continue the same way is to get paid from there own individual sites?

 

[anne O'nymous]

So only way if they wanted to continue the same way is to get paid from there own individual sites?

Until a reliable alternative come in the market, yes. It will not a be big deal for already established creators, since they have a big fans and donators base. They will probably earn less, but still achieve to raise money. The biggest part of the problem will be for creators who don't have a big visibility and obviously creators who want to enter the market with their games. They both don't have a fan base yet and so will encounter real difficulties to raise some money.

 

[smnb]

It's actually nothing new. I know about a loli artist who had the same trouble with Patreon about a year ago and shared details about his experience.

First lesson was that when Patreon is against something, they really mean it - you can't host it on Patreon, you can't link to it from there, and even if you don't mention it at all, you still can't fund it using Patreon. It kind of makes sense, because there's no chance that everyone could keep a secret forever, so the stuff would be linked to Patreon eventually. How strictly they are going to enforce the rules in each individual case, that depends. They may not like some stuff, but they probably don't hate money they get from it that much.

But just because they let something slide now, doesn't mean it's safe forever. I'm affraid that current workarounds (different names for characters, special censored versions for Patreon, etc.) won't hold for very long. When every other previously incest (or other banned stuff themed) game will have "full version" with original themes easily available elsewhere, they will probably want to do something about it. Because it's the same problem again, someone can criticize them for helping to fund "bad" stuff.

The artist kept his Patreon account, but only for allowed stuff. He ended up creating own website with subscriptions and payments for the rest. The lesson learned from that was that creators know very well why they use Patreon. It's easy, they don't need to worry about anything, Patreon takes only small cut and it's all great. Handling it for own site is significantly more work and less money.