Subscription model/ abandonment is probably the biggest one for me. Speaking as someone in the software space, I totally understand the benefits of continuous development and iteration. However as a consumer I'd much rather pay for a completed game once, than get burned shoveling money at something that'll never have a proper ending.
All of those, plus I don't want any financial record of my kinks, thank you very much.
I think a lot of games on Patreon seem to be asking for rather outlandish prices. A new beta version of the game for about the same price as a subscription to some streaming services.
I'm also frustrated at the lack of sub-focused stuff. If there is kink, it's usually dommy slave owner stuff. Or breeding; that seems to be a surprisingly common theme in furry stuff at least, and it's something I'm just not into.
Your first point is super accurate ime. I've definitely seen instances where a dev is asking for $15-30 monthly just to have access to an EA or beta version that might take anywhere from six weeks to six months (or more) to arrive.
Like I get that game dev isn't easy, and I definitely wanna support you, but my dude, I'm not paying you hundreds to (potentially) thousands of dollars over the years to play an incomplete game that's still gonna take you seven more years to complete, if it ever even gets completed.
Two main factors:
I'm pretty broke.
I hate subscriptions.
Then there's the fact that a huge number are incomplete and end up being abandoned. This is a bigger issue when there's a story involved. Ooh you got to halfway romance your target, look forwards to getting to second base in the next update!
I've played a couple in my days. I'm just uninterested in the gameplay of these types of games. That's all there is to it.
It's part of the instance. Came up in the "Everything" feed which is much like r/all in Reddit.
Seemed worthwhile to throw in my $0.02 since I've played a couple games of this type before even if it's not my thing.
An alternate title to the post could have been What are some elements you consider when looking for a lewd game to play? But I feel like that ignores the financial aspect
I donate to or buy games that interest me but if your game involves peeing on people or watching them pee I'm out.
I'm too broke to contribute so these are reasons I won't follow/play them:
RPGM games have gotta be extremely interesting for me to bother. Generally I find basically any RPGM game clunky and ugly as hell. You can do a lot of the same things, basically, with Ren'py or Unity so I just don't understand why people bother with RPGM. Maybe it's very easy to handle from dev perspective? I remember reading somewhere that it can be difficult to do combat in Ren'py, but frankly that's generally not why I'm playing these types of games.
If a game has too much lead up to the nsfw scenes, it better have very interesting characters/plot because otherwise I will probably drop it. I have a pretty limited attention span so you gotta get me interested quick.
There's a couple kinks that I'm just flat not into to. I generally will just attempt to ignore or avoid them, but if that's the whole game.
Mostly the last bullet point you listed, I already had a friend comment when I played a lewd game and forgot to go offline on steam before hiding it was an option, kinda scared me away. Also, I'm pretty sure I'd get endless shit from my husband if he saw what I was playing lol
Steam has a new feature now where you can mark games as private and they won't show up for other people when they look at your games or when you're playing it.
I do contribute to a handful of lewd games in development. I'd contribute to more if I had more money, so its mostly an "I'm broke" thing? Aside from that and whether I acually like the game, the only other factor I generally consider is whether it has good representation or not.