Patreon Account Selling Pirated Games - Developers Beware

Conviction07

Active Member
Game Developer
May 6, 2017
764
3,227
I've just become aware of this patreon that's started selling acquired games (which I'm guessing came from here), on their account. I know this is a pirate site so perhaps it seems hypocritical to complain about it, but I don't think I'm the only one that would find someone profiting off the hard work of countless developers as a really scummy thing to do. What are you guys' thoughts on this?
 

brynhildr

Compulsive Gambler
Jun 2, 2017
6,483
56,913
Long story short, people go and pay for games on someone's patreon, when there's this site here. Right here. . Where everything is completely free and no one asks for money?


Those people there sure are dumb. And also I think it's quite "illegal" somehow, since he/she's definitely profit from games which devs I highly doubt will ever give the green light, to profit other than them themselves for obvious reasons.
 

thecardinal

Latina midget, sub to my Onlyfans - cash for gash
Game Developer
Jul 28, 2017
1,491
4,422
Hey MiaGameHouse, you have permission to use my game. But just to let you know, I'm going to start a Patreon where I charge $1 every TWO months and provide all the same games/walkthroughs that you do. Capitalism baby. :cool:

But honestly, if you pay someone who didn't make the game when you could have downloaded it for free (often times from the developer themselves) on this site, you are retarded and I don't want/need the money that bad.
 

Domiek

In a Scent
Donor
Game Developer
Jun 19, 2018
1,903
9,580
I know this is a pirate site so perhaps it seems hypocritical to complain about it
Not hypocritical at all. This is not just a pirate site. This is a community that gives devs a lot of exposure and most of the games would be in a much worse situation without this place. I am grateful for this community.

What that guy is doing is taking a cut off of someone elses hard work without providing any benefit to the dev in return. Thanks for bringing this to our attention.
 

Snarkfu

Member
Mar 7, 2017
256
1,729
Long story short, people go and pay for games on someone's patreon, when there's this site here. Right here. . Where everything is completely free and no one asks for money?
Tbf you need to know that it exists for it to be of any use, given the size of the adult games community I'd expect this site to have waaay more members than it does, it's like torrent sites for normal software but many times better.
 
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W65

Active Member
May 31, 2018
779
841
I guess the value you're paying for is not having to go find the games yourself. Maybe that's worth a dollar a month to some folks? That sounds like a pretty lame explanation even to me, but that's all I can really come up with.

It's also sorta funny to hear them claiming to be able to get "any game." Let me go find some names of some obscure old 2000s-era doujin games that exist only in disc form, and see how much luck they have getting them. Not, of course, that I expect that to be anything more than a smokescreen.

Frankly, unless these kinds of things are cropping up and being shut down all the time, I'm a little surprised we don't see more of this running around. What's the cost in standing up a Patreon page for an operation like this, anyhow? This guy might've made a few hundred dollars for doing next to nothing.

It's kind of a cousin-scam of game pirates that shove links behind a bunch of those shady "link shorteners." Except that those don't really require you to give them money, instead just exposing you to a flood of questionable advertising links. But the pirate still makes their piece of eight that way. It's also sort of a second-cousin to the Old Goat Rapidshare and its thousand "get a premium account with us" spawn.

(Which one was the goat with a thousand young? I can't keep my cosmic horrors straight anymore.)
 
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Ranger

'Water World' developer
Game Developer
Jul 30, 2017
1,144
2,142
Not hypocritical at all. This is not just a pirate site. This is a community that gives devs a lot of exposure and most of the games would be in a much worse situation without this place. I am grateful for this community.

What that guy is doing is taking a cut off of someone elses hard work without providing any benefit to the dev in return. Thanks for bringing this to our attention.
As a developer of , I completely agree with the above statement. I don't see my game being posted here as 'piracy' because most (if not all) of my patreons are members of this great community. And also you can't 'pirate' a game that has no license agreement (mine doesn't, because I want it being shared). That being said, the account sharing all those games is violating Patreon's rules that state that you can't post content which you haven't created yourself. I've already reported them and I urge whoever reads this to report them also, so Patreon takes them down faster.
 

Nizzz

Newbie
Dec 30, 2018
23
41
For me It's really hard to understand why someone would want to give money to that, instead to the original creators.

When I support a patreon is for the sake of helping a game developer that I like and I want to help them having more resources / time to develop / motivation / whatever, not for getting the game itself.
 

おい!

Engaged Member
Mar 25, 2018
2,574
7,523
Can someone explain to me the difference between what the person on patreon is doing, compared to any dev that uses Honey Select for example as a base for their game. After all Honey Select is owned by Illusion Company and FAKKU paid for the license to release Unlimited. But devs will release Honey Select based games on patreon and take money for something that is not originally their work.
 

Winterfire

Forum Fanatic
Respected User
Game Developer
Sep 27, 2018
4,951
7,270
Can someone explain to me the difference between what the person on patreon is doing, compared to any dev that uses Honey Select for example as a base for their game. After all Honey Select is owned by Illusion Company and FAKKU paid for the license to release Unlimited. But devs will release Honey Select based games on patreon and take money for something that is not originally their work.
Despite still being a copyright infringement, it is still transformative work, you write a story and program the game and since so many seem to use that, it has also to be good to succeed.
The guy on that patreon is doing what F95zone does better but not for free and does not support the devs behind those games.
 

Domiek

In a Scent
Donor
Game Developer
Jun 19, 2018
1,903
9,580
Can someone explain to me the difference between what the person on patreon is doing, compared to any dev that uses Honey Select for example as a base for their game. After all Honey Select is owned by Illusion Company and FAKKU paid for the license to release Unlimited. But devs will release Honey Select based games on patreon and take money for something that is not originally their work.
So you know that a lot of DJ/music producers sample other people's work to create a new song? A lot of music that's made it to the radio has been taking little sound bytes or instrumental sections to create an entirely new song. For example, listen to the intro of Charles Aznavours song . Sounds quite a lot like Dre's , right? This is what the devs using Honey Select models are doing. They are using a part of someone else's work to create something new. A lot of long hours and hard effort goes into this. Of course most musicians gain permission or pay some sort of licensing cost. Most devs are doing this as a hobby and would never be able to afford proper licensing.

What Miagamehouse patreon page is doing however, is the equivalent of buying an album and then ripping it onto a bunch of CDs and selling them (Guess this example makes more sense 15 years ago). There is absolutely little to no effort required. They aren't changing the product or putting any sort of artistic spin on it. They are just trying to make money off of someone else's work. More importantly, the people they are stealing from are usually already making far less from this hobby than they would by just getting a minimum wage job somewhere.
 

RomanHume

Sommelier of Pussy & Purveyor of Porn
Game Developer
Jan 5, 2018
2,390
13,335
I've just become aware of this patreon that's started selling acquired games (which I'm guessing came from here), on their account. I know this is a pirate site so perhaps it seems hypocritical to complain about it, but I don't think I'm the only one that would find someone profiting off the hard work of countless developers as a really scummy thing to do. What are you guys' thoughts on this?
Not hypocritical at all. While we only post the recent "public" version of our game, people routinely pirate and post the latest patron version on here and we do not interfere. Every single time our most recent version of the game gets pirated and posted on F95Zone we see an uptick in paying patrons.

F95Zone provides a great place for people to come and sample our game, and if they like it, they go on to become patrons if their means support us. In a very real way F95Zone is providing us with free advertising, free community tech support, and a free venue in which we can interact with our players. So while they might not have paid for the game that is being posted in the OP, they providing a very valuable service that has become a critical cornerstone to our marketing mix.

But what these dick bags are doing is taking product from F95Zone, selling it, and making absolutely Zero contributions to the developers or this forum. We filed copywrite paperwork with Patreon to complain but I don't think it's really going to help. So our strategy is to just bombard their comment sections with F95Zone's address and let their patrons know about F95Zone. I assume their patrons are just ignorant because why pay a $1 when you can get it for free here.
 

DarthSeduction

Lord of Passion
Donor
Game Developer
Dec 28, 2017
3,360
5,213
@Runey @Perverteer @T4bbo @Faerin @gamersglory @Fasder @DrPinkCake @GDS @Philly_Games @HopesGaming

Sorry for the tags, but I hope you'll forgive me when you read the OP

I've just become aware of this patreon that's started selling acquired games (which I'm guessing came from here), on their account. I know this is a pirate site so perhaps it seems hypocritical to complain about it, but I don't think I'm the only one that would find someone profiting off the hard work of countless developers as a really scummy thing to do. What are you guys' thoughts on this?
I was gonna report this Patreon, but the only way to do so is a DMCA claim, and I haven't found my titles on it. Yours are however.

There's nothing inherently wrong with piracy, it's how we get exposure, but if that piracy is used to profit someone else for our work, then it becomes theft.