I think the most important part of this is adding ways to support a developer. We aren’t machines and while sticking to a content schedule is nice, the way you’ve laid out hard numbers is just not how it works when you’re a creative.
Sometimes people want to support a creator while they’re working on a long-term project regardless of the final result. If the supporter is unhappy with the release cadence they can always unsubscribe and resub later if they want to.
What exactly are you referring to? My opinion why per posting funding is not favored on patreon? That is based on observation and my own spending habits.
My point is, that calling it a subscription when talking about creation of a game, is not quite the right mindset. You subscribe to netflix or your newspaper. But you fund/support/finance/patronize the developer. Sometimes because you want the perks or just because you like the game to be made.
Itch is optimized for projects and their distribution including paying for them - once. Not for continous creator support.
With all the linking they allow to such support platforms, itch would do good to take a share of the cake. There are many that would rather give money to itch, than to patreon. While games do constitute a large portion of patreons, the nerds of wikipedia do not even mention games in their introduction paragraph about patreon.
It is patreaon that takes away those early access customers from itch&co. Itch should take them back to a games orientated platform. Patreon is a bad company with questionable policies. I remember how they unilaterally changed their pricing some years ago, losing many patrons. https://www.polygon.com/2017/12/13/16773142/patreon-service-fee-community-backla... before reality cought up to them and they backtracked. They are not popular because they are good, they are popular, because they are big and have not much competition.
Just look where game creators go: to patreon, a non game optimised platform. They should go to itch, a platform dedicated to support indie game creators. While people whine and complain about tag searching on itch, where is the game search on patreon, like, at all?!
The platform is catered to projects.
You can browse for projects on Itch. You can only search for creators on patreon.
You pay for a project and become an owner of your keypage to the project on Itch. On patreon you pay the creator for temporary access to whatever support-tier they have - you will not own a copy of the finished game, even if the final game only costs 10 bucks and you supported it with 400 bucks over the years.
Whatever people use a platform's payment method might not be the intended way. Patreon is very ill fitting to finance projects like games. It is ok to collect regular donations and give some incentives, like giving access to a more recent game version. I have even seen projects that outright suggest to "buy" the game by supporting for a month on patreon - because money collection is hard for small time devs. They use whatever they can.
Oh, and my impression of the devs on patreon with multiple games, was more like, give us money because you like us and also, you will have access to the non-public version of our games. But there is very likely perception bias, because so many devs only have one game in the making.
Anyways, Itch should fill the nieche between kickstarter and patreon. Financing a game project while it is being made, having "early access" for that period, and still getting the completed game in their library. There is no library on patreon where you can download your games.
