2023 Transparency (Patreon)

In January of each year, I write a post describing how I spent the money that I received through Patreon throughout the previous year, and my plans for the upcoming year.

There have been transparency reports for 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, and 2022. Now, it's time to write the report for 2023.

Here is how much money I received through Patreon over the course of 2023:

• January - $2,184.52
• February - $1919.94
• March - $1,867.11
• April - $2,129.30
• May - $1,517.26
• June - $1,613.82
• July - $1,416.36
• August - $1,721.64
• September - $1,415.34
• October - $1,295.26
• November - $1,392.78
• December - $2,358.51

I made a total of $20,143.74 through Patreon in 2023.

In 2015, I stated that, on any month where I made more than $3,500 through Patreon, all income past the $3,500 mark wouldn't go to me; it would be be put into a "fund" that would used to compensate the volunteers who contribute to the game. I called this fund "the surplus."

From 2015~2018, I always earned at least $3,500 per month through Patreon, so that surplus eventually grew to over $20,000. However, starting in 2019, my earnings dropped beneath $3,500 per month, so the surplus stopped growing, even though I kept using money from the surplus to compensate volunteers. At the end of last year, the surplus was at $19,366.84.

On most years, very few volunteers asked to be compensated for their work. There were years when less than $600 was taken out of the surplus. However, this year, the amount of money taken out of the surplus was higher than normal, which I'll detail below.

On previous years, I listed the exact names of the people who I paid money to. However, this year, I have chosen to withhold their names and keep them anonymous in order to prevent them from receiving harassment.

• Voice actress - $2,572.80
• Composer - $378.00
• Modeler - $620
• Concept artist - $60
• Artist - $60
• Artist - $30
• Modeler - $80

That's $3,800.80 in total. The remaining money left over in the surplus is $15,566.04.

2023 Progress

I'm going to recap something I said in my previous Transparency Report; I apologize if you get deja vu from reading this.

After the release of 1980s Mode, I received an avalanche of extremely useful feedback from players. I turned this feedback into a "checklist" of changes and improvements that should be made to the game. I thought that this checklist would only take a few months to complete - however, as time passed, more (extremely valid) feedback kept coming in, so the checklist kept growing. Also, as I worked on the game, I observed numerous things that I wanted to improve or change, so I started adding more tasks to that checklist - everything from "features I  had promised years ago, but never implemented" to "features that would make the game more approachable for new players."

It took a while, but, in December of 2023, I finished that checklist. I have now implemented every feature / mechanic that I've ever wanted the game to have. (Well, I can think of one or two other features that might potentially make it into the game eventually - like being able to become a member of the bullies or a member of the student council - but, if I ever work on those things, it'll be months from now.) I am now ready to move on to the next phase of the project.

2024 Plans

The original plan was...

• Complete Checklist ->
• Make YouTube videos about everything I've added to the game since the release of 1980s Mode ->
• Launch crowdfunding campaign ->
• Use the money from the campaign to hire animators and voice actors so I can put the remaining 202X rivals into the game and finish the project.

However, I am no longer confident in this plan. Over the years, Yandere Simulator has been through an tremendous number of controversies, and at this point in time, there may be too much negative sentiment surrounding the game for a crowdfunding campaign to be successful.

Without a crowdfunding campaign, it will not be possible to hire animators and voice actors to bring the 202X rivals to life. It's possible that the 202X rivals may have to be implemented without voices, and without any new animations beyond what has already been created for the game. However, that is the absolute last thing that I would ever want to do, especially when people have been waiting since 2017 to see those rivals come to life.

This puts me into a pretty awkward, "Uh, what am I supposed to do now?" situation. Over the past month, while waiting for the project's future to become more apparent, I fixed bugs and did preliminary work on the next rival - Amai - while trying to gauge the best course of action that I should take. However, even after spending a month mulling it over and waiting to see if things got any better, the project's future still feels very difficult to predict, and I'm really not sure what kind of decisions I should be considering right now.

Amai Progress

Regardless of how uncertain I feel about the game's future, there is one thing that I am so curious about that it dominates my thoughts almost completely: If I started working on Amai right now, with the resources I currently have access to, how long would it take to complete her, and what would be the quality level of the final result?

I think I'm simply too curious to resist pursuing the answer to that question. So, I've shifted my attention completely to implementing Amai. So far, I've...

• Written (almost) all of the dialogue that she will speak during her week
• Planned out the entirety of her Befriend/Betray sidequest
• Designed and implemented her Task
• Begun developing a new system that will be used for all "rival events" moving forward, with emphasis on making the system as modular as possible so that it's fast and easy to implement new rival events.

I'd like to find out just how quickly I can finish implementing her, and see what kind of production levels I'm able to achieve with the volunteers who are currently available. Maybe I'll learn that I'm actually able to implement her at a reasonable pace, at a satisfactory level of quality. Or, maybe I'll have to cut so many corners that the end result simply wouldn't be acceptable. I'm not sure what to predict just yet - which is why I'd like to keep working on her and see how things turn out.

In Closing

Sadly, the circumstances surrounding Yandere Simulator's development have worsened significantly over the years. It will be difficult for the final product to live up to its full potential without a lot of outside assistance. However, despite everything, I do not intend to give up, and I plan to continue working on the game until it is finished.

Your continued support enables the game to keep getting cool new assets (like the new environment and new characters that I showed off 2 weeks ago, and more cool stuff that I'll be posting to Patreon in February) and gives me a lot of hope that it will be possible to release a game that lives up to the expectations that have been building up over the past 9 years of development.

I understand how fortunate I am to still have supporters, after the countless twists and turns that the game's development has been through. I don't take you for granted, and I'm very happy that you're still here with me. I hope that 2024 will turn out better for us than previous years.

On the bright side, look at things this way: Because I have completely exhausted the list of non-rival tasks to work on, there is now nothing left for me to work on except the rivals, so it's pretty much a guarantee that we're going to get multiple new 202X rivals added to the game this year! Woo hoo!

Thank you for supporting the development of Yandere Simulator!