A Game by Westane, Inspired by Wandrer
Greetings everyone!
As I’m sure most of you have noticed, The Company is currently involved in ironing out some issues with Patreon. Now that the situation is becoming a little more clear, it’s time to sit down and talk about it!
What Happened?
Simply put, Patreon finally decided to put our project on it’s Trust & Safety radar, leading to the determination that the project violates its policies. Moves to adhere to their policies have involved purging old posts, modifying the opening sections of the game slightly, and severing ties the Patreon page has to services such as Discord and the official website.
What’s Currently Happening?
We’ve made the requested changes and are now waiting for the appeal to go through. I don’t know how long the process takes, but so far the agent I’m working with has been reasonably communicative. Ideally this will be resolved sooner than later and we can all go back to normal, but there’s no real way of knowing at this point.
How Will This Affect The Community?
Things like Discord server roles that came from Patreon might be a little wonky in the transition, and Patreon will no longer be a source of news or downloads for the time being. As you can see, we are currently migrating over to SubscribeStar completely, and implore the community to follow us there! The official website will still continue to operate normally, though the Patreon integration may prove burdensome for the time being.
How Will This Affect The Company?
A couple of things are happening. Firstly, depending on negotiations with Patreon, you will likely see a slightly modified version of The Company on offer for online gameplay, in fact you may have already seen them. These changes are surface level with no meaningful impact to the game itself, though I would expect a SubscribeStar exclusive version of the game without modified content.
Secondly, the previous roadmap is definitely going to be impacted by this, as resources are being diverted to handle it, as well as damage control. Expect a Penny update out by the end of this month, as planned, but the next development cycle will likely be in flux. So long as we can get back on our feet quickly, there are no plans to end development for The Company, with H1 2025 still be a target completion date.
How Will This Affect The Developer?
I’ve never come out and asked the community for help before, as none of you owe me a thing while I owe the world to you. That said, if I’m being completely honest, I’m scared. This project pays for the room over my family’s head and the food in our fridge, and to have Patreon rip the rug out from under me, possibly for good, is abjectly terrifying.
What I will ask my current supporters, is that if you are currently supporting The Company on Patreon, to please consider moving that support over to our SubscribeStar page. The pricing tiers are all identical to what they are on Patreon, and offer all the same bonuses and benefits. There’s, unfortunately, going to be major impact no matter what, and making that one switch over will help to drastically reduce it.
Moving Forward
That’s basically the long and short of it. For now, development will continue as normal, though some content priorities may get rearranged a little. The Discord and the official website will still operate as they always have, and we’ll all continue to move forward and see this game through to completion!
As always, thank you all for your continued feedback and support. Let’s all make this a great new era for The Company!
Hi!
Patreon is becoming a laughing stock of content providers. I can’t imagine what kind of policy The Company has violated! Of course, I immediately re-registered on the Subscribestar site.
In any case, perseverance and good luck.
Hi: CitromDiszno
P.S. Sorry, the post was made with DeepL translator.
> We reserve the right to pause or withdraw our support efforts for the Users (i.e., Stars, Subscribers, or Visitors) who are, during the communications with the Support Team, did the following:
> Expressed a disrespectful, offensive, rude, vulgar, or other ill-mannered attitudes toward the Service or its members;
> Used curse words in communication with the Support Team;
> Shared conversation between the User and the Support Team by any means (e.g., screenshot, quotation) with any third parties without prior consent from the Service;
> Spread out false or misleading information about the Service, its staff, or its policies by any means (e.g., forums, chats, Discord, etc.).
…
> Prohibited Uses
> We reserve the right to terminate your use of the Service or any related website for violating any of the prohibited uses.
…
> (j) for any obscene or immoral purpose;
…
> Prohibited Content
> We may, but have no obligation, to monitor, edit or remove content that we determine in our sole discretion are unlawful, offensive, threatening, libelous, defamatory, inappropriate or otherwise objectionable or violates any party’s intellectual property or these Terms of Service.
Also, there is this:
https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2022/06/03/subscribestar-website-lets-extremists-profit-hate
I get this on Patreon is difficult for the Company to comply with:
> It is paramount that Adult/18+ creators demonstrate consent in all works (real or animated; photo, video, written, audio) between adult participants or characters; specifically, a freely given, specific, informed and unambiguous indication of consent by a statement or by a clear affirmative action. Additionally, participants and characters must be able to give consent (i.e. not be under the influence of alcohol, drugs, hypnosis, blackmail). “Consensual non-consent” works, in which participants or characters engage in simulated non-consensual encounters, are not permitted. Accompanying a work that features a non-consensual encounter with a statement claiming that the encounter was consensual is a violation of Patreon guidelines.
However, I’m not seeing how SubscribeStar’s policies aren’t, also, just relying on nobody to complain about you. Immoral? The Company? Never. Obscene? Possibly. “otherwise objectionable” – wow that’s broad, I’m going with some random individual reviewing the whole of the content of the game probably could find something that is “otherwise objectionable.”
Inappropriate seems like a tag that would apply to at least half the scenes. I’m not complaining here, about the scenes, I’m just saying – fucking coworkers in their offices after drugging them probably is not the most appropriate of behavior.
What I’m getting at is… If we assume you came onto Trust and Safety’s radar because someone complained to them about the project, and that is always my assumption, I don’t think Patreon spends a lot of time randomly clicking projects, usually it’s called to their attention by someone else…
Then whoever that is might well do the same over on SubscribeStar. Because of the first rule, if you openly complain about it they can just ban your account – and so if you’re a creator and having issues with them, you can’t openly or publicly complain about it and even private complaints might be questionable.
I don’t know that there’s a great solution for any of it, to be clear, however – SubscribeStar’s general terms of services and policies are, to me, not in a great place and so I won’t be following there.