An update on the Itch situation

Hey there everyone!

Like many other developers, our games have been deindexed from Itch and currently cannot be found on the platform unless you have a direct link to them.

If you are unaware of what is going on, you can check this post from Itch themselves: https://itch.io/updates/update-on-nsfw-content

To solve this issue, I've added direct links to the games in the about section of our patreon page and on discord.

What's next?

Good news! We haven't received any suspension notice from Itch. Bad news? We haven't received any communication at all.

Currently, the latest news seem to indicate the question is whether or not NSFW games will stay at all on the platform, regardless of the type of content that is within them. While this seems to be more of a last resort option if no other alternative is found, this creates a significant issue and uncertainty for developers like us who chose to trust Itch as the sole source of distribution of their games.

Thankfully, our games are designed with Patreon's rules in mind, which in turn means we abide or mostly abide right away with the rules set by other NSFW friendly distribution platforms like Steam or GOG.

Short term solution

Currently, we do not know how long this situation will last, nor if any adjustment will need to be made to our games once the situation is resolved to achieve compliance.

Nobody really seems to be in the clear in a definitive way as it stands, with the situation evolving every day as petitions, news articles and various movements are causing quite the ruckus and raising public awareness about the ongoing situation.

We've been looking at how we can work around this issue while we wait for the big boys to solve their own problem. Hosting a public version ourselves was briefly considered, but after seeing nearly 80% of our players use the online version, we realized that our tiny dev server is ill-equipped for the task and it may as well cause issues with our provider as we would have to implement some sort of age gating mechanism ourselves.

This is simply unfeasible for a small team like us, and we've had to come to the unfortunate conclusion that we are better off suspending public releases for the time being until more information comes out and we know what is expected from us.

Temporary change for cadets

To solve the age gate issue, we're updating how we'll distribute the next builds until we can come up with a more reasonable and manageable solution.

• Lieutenants will continue to have early access builds, both with downloadable and online play versions. This does not change compared to what we've been doing up to now.

• Cadets will obtain a new "Cadet Pass" perk, granting access to a special discord channel with both online and downloadable builds available after the early access period is over.

While it is not ideal, by doing this, we effectively delegate the age gate to both Patreon and Discord, all while preventing our lil dev server from blowing up. This solves our problem with little changes needed on our side of things.

Long term solution

We're looking into publishing the games on other platforms in coming months, such as Steam or GOG.

This is something we always planned to do down the line. For me, publishing the games there meant they finally reached their "fully playable from start to finish" stage, which is a huge achievement in itself, but also the reason why it hasn't yet been done.

This changes our plans significantly as it means we need to prepare the games to be compatible with these platforms. Both of them have their own requirements, which means we need to setup additional automation, add platform specific code changes and most likely other things that I haven't yet thought about.

The question of how we'll distribute them there in a compliant way in the first place is equally important. Free to play with an accompanying paid DLC? One time purchase? These are all questions that need to be answered.

This is a lot of work, research and preparation that simply cannot be done in the span of a couple of weeks.

Why your support matters more than ever

We're commited to completing our games and have no plan to cease development. However, the hard reality is that Itch was nearly 60% of our reach to new players and therefore a significant portion of potential new patrons.

We are currently doing well enough that we're not yet going to be buried alive. First, in that regard I would like to thank all of our current supporters, especially our very long time supporters that have stuck with us for months, years in some cases.

However, with the loss of Itch visibility, this means the renewal of lost patrons will be more difficult and over time will tip the balance towards losses rather than earnings.

If you do like our games, consider throwing us a couple of bucks if you have the ability to do so. It helps more than you think!

Thanks for reading all the way here, and see you soon!
- Miosha