Huge changes coming to our Tiers and Rewards! (Patreon)

This Monday, May 8th, we are updating most of our Tiers with new rewards, but most importantly, we are adding two completely new ones!

That should be great news, right? More value for the same money, hooray! Well, almost. Before we get into the meat of those changes, there's one particular thing we want to focus our attention on:

- Starting from the upcoming Brigitte's update, every release will be first accessible only to $20+ Patrons, after which it will follow the usual cycle of weekly price drops, up until it gets released for free. This means, that to play any update from day one, you would have to be buy a "Commander" tier, not an "Officer".

This is the biggest change, and the one we are still feeling guilty of even considering, but as sad as we are to admit it, we are not doing all that well financially.

Don't get me wrong, we make just enough to sustain the monthly releases, but amount of overworking that goes into it is unhealthy. Yes, health should always be a priority, but let's be realistic: The cost of living got so absurdly high, that with our current income, unless we starve ourselves to half-death, none of our plans for this game will come true without year long hiatuses for each one of them. We are not asking for donations, or to pledge more or we're done for, no, we're just trying to adapt to the fact that, well, making games is hard, it's time-consuming, and damn expensive. The last thing we want you to think about us, is that we're greedy. In reality, we would gladly cut every other expense in our lives just to continue working on this project, but we don't want to force everyone in our team to do the same.

The real problem is not keeping up with updates, it's updating old routes, redrawing backgrounds, adding original OST, expanding locations, experimenting with game-mechanics, cutting out grind and instead filling everything, every day spent in the Academy with something to do. We are already hitting the wall, when it comes to where to place new characters, there's just not enough space for all of them, so if you've been wondering why we haven't added new characters in quite some time, here's your answer.

Truth is, if we want to get this game to the promised "1.0" state, we have to get bigger. Otherwise ACADEMY34 will eventually turn into one of those "check back in 10 years, maybe it's finished" type of games.

That being said, we will make sure that with higher price comes higher consistency and quality, you have our word. We are already working with freelance artists to update every location in the game and add many new ones to explore, with a musician to write fitting and completely original OST and sound-effects, we are rewriting the entirety of in-game prologue, as well as Tracer and Mercy's routes, updating UI, and, basically, doing our best to make sure soon A34 will turn into something other devs will copy.

Those changes are not something we're making easily, hence why we wanted to write an extensive explanation as to why we even going for it, but it's something we simply have to do for the longevity of this project.

NEW TIERS!

Now, let's get to more positive changes.

First and foremost, we are adding two completely new tiers, both of which are realistically there just to allow the craziest of our Patrons to get something in return for pledging as much as they do.

> GENERAL, $35 <

This tier will give you access to the entirety of every released comics from day one. For example, soon we are going to start releasing our new comic, first one to be set in the universe of ACADEMY34, which will feature your beloved hacker girl, Sombra. As soon as the first page gets published, "General" tier and higher will get access to the archive with the full comic, and it will apply to every single one we release in the future!

> HIGH COUNCIL, $50 <

We know, that there's no way in hell we could offer truly meaningful rewards for a tier that costs this much. Instead of trying to reward you with goods, we will offer you a direct-line of contact with our team, where you will be able to suggest which background characters you think should get a new story, which one should receive a mini-update, as well as propose completely new characters we could add. Those could be either completely original, or characters from other media. You might also get a shoutout in our game, with your name being mentioned by one of the characters, "news" about you appearing on billboards, or you can just suggest a meme you want to be added into the game. All of that, and probably more will be possible!

CHANGES TO EXISTING TIERS!

Our biggest gripe with existing tiers was the fact, that they didn't really offer all that much, and the Commander tier, previously the highest one, in reality had no rewards whatsoever. Those are the exact problems we tried to fix.

- Privates, $5:
Even though it was the case for past some time, we just wanted to make it official: Private tier will now get a week early access to comic pages, along with the usual access to spoilers for the next upcoming update.

- Officer, $10:
From now on, Patrons subscribed to Officer tier will get an archive, that will go along with every released update, that will contain all of the images and content added with it. This reward is focused at people, who might not have time to play the game every time we drop new stuff, but would still like to "enjoy" all of the freshly added spice.

- Commander, $20:
Apart from being the first ones to get their hands on every new release, Commander tier will also get access to weekly "Super Spoiler" posts, that will feature sketches, storyboards, finished pictures and basically everything our art team works on at this exact moment. Right now, for example, it would be spoilers for upcoming DVa's update, that won't be released for at least another month or two.

- All tiers:
Since few months ago, we split our game into two versions: Standard one, and High Quality. High Quality will remain a patron-exclusive for quite some time, so it might as well be counted as a reward from now on.

Even though we are happy to announce those changes and additions, we still feel guilty for having to raise the initial price to play new updates. In time, when our financial situation gets more stable, we will make sure to get back to our release schedule and rethink our approach once again. Least of all we want is to feel like greedy asshats, but at the same time we have to remain realistic.

Thank you all for your incredible support, and please, don't be too mad at us.