Dear Fans and Supporters: (Patreon)

Hello to all of our patrons, supporters, and fans- both past and present! You may not have been aware of this prior to now, but on December the 10th we got a notice that our page was suspended by patreon. 

We were suspended without warning, during the holidays. We negotiated with patreon in good faith, but they had considerable problems with all of our games. Complying with their demands would have required more time and money than was available to us.

To put it simply, to get our patreon page back up we would have had to remove all hypnosis from all of our games and ban Kissing Therapy entirely (because, in spite of being in college, the characters were perceived as underage), among other requests... All our content,  our games,  our media, 100% gone. As you can imagine, with the amount of power they wield,this was an incredibly nerve-racking moment.

However, I’ve actually been preparing for this day for a long time. At first I despaired and was ready to retire, because those plans simply weren’t ready yet. I’ve been rushing, trying to make too many games at once and burning myself out precisely because I figured this day would come.

At the last instant however, I had a brilliant idea that turned things around, got patreon to unban us, and allows me to keep paying the people that work for me over the holidays. Although this will mean tremendous change and will be rather unpleasant for all of us in some ways, this is the best use I could make of this situation.

While I was developing Snow Daze, Kissing Therapy, Hypnolab, and working on getting bits of Overwhored done (again, overworking to get stuff out before all this happened), I was also working on ANOTHER game, because I am completely insane. A very different game from all the others I’ve been working on.

Building Joy is an entirely safe for work game in the “hidden object game” genre. I originally designed it as a game I could use to get a toehold in non-adult game development. Being a game genre primarily for moms to play on the phone, it’s a way to diversify our audience and make some stable SFW bucks. It is not done, however, since my focus was on finishing my nsfw games. Obviously it can’t bring in much income, and without the income from patreon getting started in the SFW world would be practically impossible as well.

However, that’s when I hit on the idea that I ended up giving to patreon, which they accepted immediately. Effective immediately, we will be doing the following:

1:  All nsfw games, content, and prior works are being removed from patreon entirely, and will now be available on itch.io, steam (as they approve of things) and our new subscribestar page. If you’d like to support our NSFW games, please move your support to our subscribestar account. We can’t post the link here, so check our twitter!

2:  The patreon page will immediately be rebranded and used exclusively for SFW writing, games, and content. We will now be known on patreon as Citric Thoughts Games, and this is effectively a different company altogether. We retain the same page, and your patronage unless you wish to change that.

3:  All major NSFW game development is suspended while we get our feet back under us in other locations, but we will finish up Hypnolab and the Bonus Day DLC of Snow Daze first, as a lot of work has already been done on them and both should have no issues on Steam. We can finish these without patreon’s money. We’ll also be looking into getting merch set up, and payments through our own site using a private payment processor.

4:  For the near future we’ll be releasing SFW Content on the patreon page, starting with Building Joy as it’s developing, and some normal stories and sketches that will be more interesting than a hidden object game for you all. I’m already working on some ideas.

Instead of us either having to mutilate our games beyond recognition at exorbitant cost or losing all of our income right before Christmas,  we now have an opportunity to fix the single greatest weakness of every NSFW game developer: stability.

You see, the real villain here isn’t patreon. That villain is paypal and other payment processors. Patreon would be insane to want to take all their cash cows out back and shoot them in the head, but they have no choice. The payment processors can just refuse to work with patreon entirely at any time they please. In other words, they’re in exactly the same position I am one level up. This means that no matter where I go, no matter what site I work with, I have the same eventual issues if they are controlled by those payment processors. I am therefore always forced to dance around from place to place to keep my team and myself working and getting paid. It’s always a gamble, and eventually it will be a disaster.

I’ve been around longer than patreon and will be around after it’s gone. I’ve been aware of this weakness in the system since the moment I first joined. This is the one plan that patreon would never argue with and which is the least bad option we have.

Patreon gets to keep making money from us under our SFW studio. Paypal doesn’t have to deal with naughty stuff on patreon. We get to keep making adult games on subscribestar, steam, and itch.io as Outbreak Games and keep making money that keeps a roof over our heads. 

Had I simply decided to shut down the patreon and move to subscribestar and other funding instead, I would have lost a lot of you immediately. 

This will only work under two conditions however. 

1: We are completely sincere about taking the patreon page 100% SFW. It’ll be a place solely for non-pornographic games, stories, and art. We’re not playing coy about this, there will never be NSFW content on patreon again. We will make our funding for that from other places.

2: This only works if you, the patrons, continue to support us during the change. I’m well aware that Building Joy is not going to be the most exciting game for many of the patrons of my current games. This is, after all, not what you signed up for. Many of you will immediately move to subscribestar. However, if you continue to support us on patreon as we work through this transition it will help to keep our lives stable. Not as NSFW developers, but just as people trying to make their rent and as people that can afford to eat. We didn’t choose this outcome, but we’re making the most of it. If you are truly dissatisfied with what I’m doing in response to this situation, I’ll refund your recent patronage.

We have turned what could have been a studio ending disaster for us into an opportunity to gain stability - the one thing normally denied to people working on NSFW games. Only you can make this method work, however.

There will be some disruption, and for the next few months I’ll be working on transitioning everything over. I’m also going to be taking things more easy because I really am pretty worn out at this point. I am not, however, gonna quit. 

Thank you all so much for your help, support, and patronage over the years. Even if you don’t support anymore and won’t in the future, I want to thank you all for helping to make what we’ve accomplished so far possible. Our games exist - and will continue to exist - because of you! 

Let none stop the great work that we have made together! Let us have great games forever!