Patreon, Piracy & Shapes (now on the Asset Store!) (Patreon)

Shapes is now on the asset store! that is, not patreon and piracy. although they might be on the asset store too for all I know but anyhow~

These past weeks have been, quite the roller coaster of many feelings but somehow ended up being absolutely wonderfully good 💖

Shapes was (pre?) released a while back here on patreon, and things were going well as people started getting access and whatnot!
Until, someone (who I still don't know who it was) supported me here on patreon, asked to get access to the repository, and then proceeded to pirate/leak it immediately :c

It's, really frustrating that these things happen, especially when getting Shapes at $10 is already *heavily* underpriced, and yet the people who have pirated it that I've talked to use the excuse that some people might be able to not afford it, as if that's their decision to make on my behalf

Now, I know piracy happens. A lot of less than nice people quipped at me going "what did you expect? it's the internet" or "everything gets pirated, in fact, you should be grateful" or outright thought I somehow wasn't aware that things get pirated?

I think for me, piracy is not a black and white issue. There are cases where I think it can be justified, and others where it's not, and the way you do it matters a lot

Pirating big enterprise software that have no small-creator license that is even close to viable when you don't have a lot of money, is a completely different thing than pirating an indie game, or in this case, an indie tool, by supporting their private patreon and personally asking them to get access

Heck, I even had people pirate Shader Forge all the time, and I was more fine with it because back then it was less personal. But the way whoever leaked it now did it, is absolutely a breach of trust, especially when we had a conversation in DMs.

I, got rather openly upset about this, and somehow, an *incredible* amount of people supported me as a result, both emotionally and economically, and, it's honestly absolutely mind blowing how much patreon grew over just 4 days.

Releasing Shapes here on patreon was something I'd been wanting to do for a very long time. I've been wanting to centralize my supporters in one place, since this is my primary source of stable income now that I don't work a dayjob anymore.

But companies started to contact me about licensing, which is legally difficult territory, so things got quite a lot more complicated that I expected, in addition to having people who mostly wanted Shapes rather than support the work I do in general. This is why Shapes is now on the asset store instead, and I won't be giving access through patreon anymore from now on (because I'm also literally not allowed according to the Unity EULA now)

oh, everyone who got access through here will still keep it of course!

I honestly don't really know how to thank you all enough for this absolutely massive growth in support

I was talking about doing an AMA earlier, so, if you have any longer questions you'd like me to cover in that video, feel free to leave a comment! I'd be very much up for answering whatever questions you might have 💖

Until then, thank you all so hecking much!!