A lot of people have accused me of being a "scam artist" because my game's development has lasted for a long time. The theory is that I am trying to stretch out the game's development in order to lengthen the amount of time that I will be recieving donations. This extremely damaging false accusation has caused me to lose most of my financial support and endure an avalanche of hate and harassment for the past 5 years. However, no matter how you look at it, the accusation that I am a "scam artist" doesn't actually make any sense at all.
Think about it for a moment. If my intention was to make tons of money from Patreon, then wouldn't I attempt to make people aware that my Patreon exists? Instead, I do the opposite. I rarely mention my Patreon at all. I've uploaded over 150 videos to my YouTube channel, and from 2014 to 2021, I think I've only mentioned my Patreon about 5 times in total.
I don't mention the Patreon in my video descriptions. I don't mention the Patreon in my blog posts. I don't mention the Patreon on social media. It's almost like I'm trying to keep the Patreon a secret or something. These are not the actions of someone who is attempting to milk money out of people. Actually, I think most people are actually completely unaware that I even HAVE a Patreon.
The more you think about it, the less sense it makes. If my intention was to make tons of money from Patreon, then wouldn't I constantly try to incentivize people to donate to my Patreon? Wouldn't I lock the game behind a paywall? Wouldn't I have a bunch of different tiers, offering different rewards? "Donate $20 and have a 30-minute voice call with the developer once per month!" Et cetera?
Instead, the opposite is true. For 6 years, I only had 2 tiers. Gee, it's almost as though I barely put any thought at all into the Patreon and didn't have any serious plans for it. It's almost as though I want the Patreon to be out of sight, out of mind, so that I can focus all of my attention on development. It's almost as though I'm too busy with development to even think about the Patreon.
The theory that I'm a scam artist is based on the assumption that I'm greedy for money. This assumption can be disproven easily; if you look the decisions that I've made over the past 9 years, you'll notice that every one of those decisions was an anti-money decision; at absolutely every opportunity, I have done the OPPOSITE of what someone would do if their priority was making money.
If my intention was to make lots of money, I would not keep so much controversial content in the game. Every time someone complained that something in the game offended them, I would have caved in and removed the offensive content in order to avoid losing a donor. Instead, I keep all sorts of controversial content in the game, because my creative vision matters more to me than money.
If my intention was to make lots of money, I would launch new merchandise at every opportunity. Instead, I limit myself to one or two merchandise announcements per year. I rarely even make any sort of effort to remind people that I have merchandise. Does that seem like a decision that would be made by someone who is trying to suck cash out of people?
If my intention was to make lots of money, I would have started selling the game as an early access title back in 2015, when it was being played by massive YouTubers. Instead, Yandere Simulator has been free for 9 years. A 3-gigabyte game that contains hours of content and regularly receives updates and bug fixes, provided entirely for free. That's not exactly the definition of a scam.
If my intention was to make lots of money, I would have put ads on the game's download page. From 2014 to 2021, Yandere Simulator has been downloaded over 10,000,000 times. If I received 1 cent per ad view, I would have made over $100,000 from ads alone! But, a lot of ads have obnoxious fake "CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD" buttons, and I think that's unethical, so I don't include ads on my pages.
If my intention was to make lots of money, I would accept all of the sponsorship offers that I'm getting all the time. I've actually been offered $10,000 to promote mobile games - multiple times. But, I've always declined, purely because I don't think anyone in my audience would care about those types of games. (I wonder, in that situation, would you make the same decision as me?)
Ironically, the same people who accuse me of intentionally prolonging the game's development also like to claim that the majority of the game's fanbase is made up of children. However, these two claims cannot co-exist. You can't milk money out of an underage audience; kids don't have bank accounts. They can't donate to Patreon. The accusation collapses after 2 seconds of critical thinking.
Furthermore, prolonging the game's development would be counterproductive to my long-term goals. I want to develop many games after Yandere Simulator. If I made greedy decisions, nobody would want to support any of my future games. The long-term benefit of a returning audience is more valuable than getting a few extra donations. Stretching out the game's development time just wouldn't be smart.
Oh, and another thing - on most months, the amount of money that I earn from Patreon is lower than the amount of money I'd make by working a minimum wage job. Yandere Sim is not a cash cow making me a ton of money; it's paying me less than minimum wage. If I was greedy for money, I'd abandon Yandere Sim immediately and go work at McDonald's, since it would pay more. The accusation that I'm greedy and only doing this for money falls apart after using logic for just a few seconds.
Considering all of the above information, it doesn't make any sense whatsoever for anyone to conclude that I'm intentionally prolonging the game's development. It's a completely illogical theory, on par with a nutjob conspiracy theory. So, why would anyone reach that conclusion? Why would anyone actually believe something so ridiculous? Actually, it's quite simple. I'll tell you:
The most easy way to get a ton of clicks and attention on YouTube is to make shocking accusations about a creator with a large following. The creator's large following will check out your video, resulting in lots of views - and thus, lots of ad revenue. It is financially beneficial to draw the most negative possible conclusions about others - even if those conclusions aren't actually true.
To get attention and make money, you don't need skill, or talent, or even basic human decency. You only need one thing: the willingness to completely ruin another person's career and reputation. As long as destroying another human being's life with false accusations doesn't bother you, it's actually very easy to get hundreds of thousands of subscribers and millions of views on YouTube.
It is beneficial to psychologically convince yourself that a large creator is an evil monster who deserves to be exposed and cancelled. As long as you can persuade yourself to believe that your target is a villainous demon, you will feel justified in doing absolutely anything to them. Truth, logic, critical thinking, and common sense? All of these things are completely unnecessary.
Make sure to never directly contact your target one-on-one and attempt to have an actual conversation with them, or listen to their side of the story. Doing so would humanize them, and that wouldn't benefit you. You might actually start to think of them as a human being, rather than a way for you to get attention and money. Then, it wouldn't be as easy to make a video about them.
And, above all, make sure that you absolutely never admit that you were wrong about your target, or apologize for spreading misinformation about them. Your audience would realize that clickbait drama YouTubers are actually the least-credible source of information on the Internet, and wouldn't patronize your videos in the future. That would mean that you'd make less money in the future!
Ironically, as a direct result of dishonest clickbait YouTubers spreading false accusations and untrue narratives about me, a lot of people have withdrawn their financial support from Yandere Simulator. This means that, in the future, I might actually have to start doing some of the things that were described above.
I might have to start offering more rewards on Patreon. I might have to start advertising my Patreon more often. I might have to launch more merch. I might have to put the game behind a paywall. I might have to put ads on the download page. I might have to start doing sponsored content and advertising mobile games. All because dishonest people have taken away my financial security.
The sad thing is, this isn't even the only false accusation that has been made about me. This is just one of many stupid narratives that should have collapsed after about two seconds of using common sense - but I don't want to spend my time debunking dishonest clickbait YouTubers. I just want to spend my time developing my silly anime girl video game.
For God's sake - in 2020, hundreds of thousands of people were actually completely convinced that I "threatened suicide" after someone stole my game's assets to make a low-quality rip-off game. And in the screenshot that they were parading around as "evidence", there wasn't even a single reference to suicide. There was only a statement that people chose to INTERPRET as a suicide threat.
Nobody cares about the truth anymore. They only care about interpreting information in a way that confirms the bias they already had to begin with. They only care about interpreting information in whatever way will allow them to feel justified in being cruel on the Internet. If the truth is boring, nobody will spread it. If a lie is entertaining, everybody will believe it.
The bottom line? Your reputation is not determined by your words or your actions. Your reputation is determined by what people enjoy SAYING about you, even if absolutely nothing that they are saying is true in the slightest.
Visit yanderesimulator.com/answers to hear more.