Question for Patreon developers

[WonderGamer]

I have a question I need to ask Patreon developers (particularly those using subscription-based contributions). I found a game of interest called Malise and the Machine, where I tried a demo (or possibly early beta) I found on another site. I enjoyed what I played & had interest in it in some images I found on one of the hentai sites I got to, wanted more, so I sought out the Patreon page for it. Created an account for this game alone, eventually found a post where I could leave a comment (most of them being locked up to patrons only).

First thing I noticed was that it was subscription-based, which nearly made me lose interest on the spot, but I decided to get more information on it. Unfortunately the developer (Eromancer) either hasn't seen or is ignoring the request for further information, so I'm trying to gain a better understanding of how subscription-based Patreon pages work. He stated that if there was a total of $20 or more before the game was released, those people would be getting a full-uncensored version of the game on it's release (he stated retail, however I highly doubt this will be getting released in public stores).

The question that I am trying to get an answer on (and failing at doing so) is what happens to that total should I cancel my subscription or allow it to lapse? Does the previous amount of contributions still stay there even if I'm no longer actively contributing or does it get wiped? Should I decide to pick up the subscription again, will it continue from where I left off or start back at $0?

The game is interesting enough I'd be willing to throw $20 at it immediately & maybe do a $3 per month subscription at least for some time (obviously I'm not a fan of subscriptions for adult-oriented games, I've been screwed over by two many of them purchased over the web in the past), but without a response on how this works, I probably won't be getting into it until it's already released (and that's only if the price of the full release doesn't increase to an unreasonable price).

[x3Darkie]

The amount of a patron pledged and processed will accumulate and show up as "lifetime" in Patreon's Patron Manager. If your 20$ pledge processed on month 1, it'll show up as 20$ at lifetime. Processed on month 2, it'll show up as 40$. If you changed your pledge amount to 3$ on month 3 and it processed, it'll show up at 43$, and so on. However, I don't think Patreon have a way to viewing previous patrons who backed out of pledging as of yet. I can't tell you exactly what he meant by total unfortunately. You're gonna have to ask him about that. I assume he meant a lifetime total of 20$, but the wording isn't exactly crystal clear.

[WonderGamer]

Thanks for the information, although as you said, it's something I need to ask him & I have limited ability to get a message to him without being a patron first, so I probably won't bother paying into it until it's released. Perhaps I should consider contacting Patreon directly, maybe the staff can make contact with him, although I expect that will be filed more as a complaint than a request for information when I have to get staff of the site to contact the developer, so I'd likely be screwing myself out of a copy even if I had paid it (of course I keep records of most everything, so should be easy to prove it on a negative review of the developer & game if he does take that route; I'm sure it isn't going to look good if he's ignoring possible customers anyways, it's that reason I haven't paid into it yet, although I probably wouldn't even need to contact him to begin with if it wasn't subscription-based).

I believe his statement of "$20 total" means at least $20 needs to be pledged to the project before it's released to get the retail copy, however being as it's subscription-based, I expect if I drop the subscription, that means I opt out of the retail copy even if I paid it & that's what I'm trying to verify, because I don't intend on paying into it until release if that is the case. I suppose contacting Patreon directly might be able to clear that up, but the way I see it, if a developer wants to ignore their customers (well I'm not yet, but probably would be already if he had answered), then they probably don't really care for your business anyways...