Announcing a change in patron benefits and public releases

After the release of Saving Chloe, Mortze and I sat down and discussed how to better engage with our fans.  We decided that a significant problem was that we'd release a game, then go dark for a year while developing the next game.  We looked at what other game producers were doing and found that most of them were releasing their games in regular small chunks rather than all at once at the end.  So we decided to try doing the same.  That was the genesis of our current "Episode" strategy.

It doesn't seem to be working.  We gained some patrons at first, but then our numbers started to decline.  In May we literally lost 10% of our patrons, and we're currently negative again in June.

There are a number of potential explanations for this.  Maybe people haven't liked the stories we've been telling since Saving Chloe.  Maybe people haven't liked the episodes.  Or maybe releasing the episodes to patrons just two weeks before releasing them to the public isn't enough of a perk to keep patrons happy.  I've read all of the patron exit interviews, but the answer isn't there.

So, we're going to change gears a bit.  The stories we're telling now are already episodic, and wouldn't lend themselves to switching to the old way of doing things.  But I can change the patron benefit.

After DF Ep2, we are no longer going to release episodes of Coming to Grips with Christine, Darkness Falls, or AAA to the public.  Instead we're going to wait until the games are completed and release them as full games then (for free, as with all of our other games).  (I haven't decided yet whether or not to ever release AAA to the public or keep it as a patron benefit.)

However, we are going to keep releasing episodes to patrons.  $10 patrons will continue to get CtGwC and DF episodes on the same schedule as before.  And $1 patrons will continue to get AAA episodes as well.  The weekly pictures for $5 patrons won't change either.

I don't know whether this will stem the patron bleeding or increase it, but we have to try something.  When we finish the current stories and release them to the public, we'll reassess how we want to move forward from there.  

For the large number of you who have stuck with us for so long, we are extremely grateful.  We literally would not be able to do this without your support.  Thank you.

Tlaero