We have passed 100 new subs!

Thanks to Spikeyxd. A round of applause there, and for everyone. You've been incredible the past few days. I'll do my best, once I've taken a breath here, to continue making the filthy bunny smut you all crave (as do I).

Day 5: Patreon is up! (Please dont' nuke me SubscribeStar, I still like you better)

No, you didn't miss a day, there was no post for day 4.

I had expected to make this post about how I'd finally hit the sub goal, and Patreon was coming, but a few days out. Instead, things are flipped.

This is...less relevant to the folks here, but a patreon for the games is now up as well. If you know people who couldn't get in over here but wanted to support, let them know! Keep in mind:

1. If you're here already, DO NOT MOVE OVER TO PATREON unless you absolutely have to. #3 covers this as well, just want to make it crystal clear. The Patreon is for people who CANNOT sub here. I'm just letting you guys know in case you need to pass the word on to someone.
2. DO NOT SUBSCRIBE TO PATREON VIA MOBILE. Apple will eat all the money. Use a real computer.
3. Use Patreon as a last resort. Patreon's fees are higher (8% vs 5), they are a much less stable option, and (ironically given their two public images) Patreon is a much more sleazy and uncomfortable company to work with. Try to sub on SubscribeStar first. 

But I know there are many, have been many for a while who simply can't, for a variety of reasons. Now, at least for a while, they have another option. I'm not going to put the link here for fear of Substar's wrath, but you can find it on the other posts I just put up elsewhere. Eventually I plan to have a linked Discord, purely for content distribution, but it will take a bit to get that set up. 

Second, sub goal. We are ONE AWAY. So close! Realistically, at this point I'll probably be fine in terms of immediate survival, especially now that the Patreon is a go. Some of the SS sub numbers are one-month subs, which is entirely fine, but also a number of people have subbed at $30, which effectively counts triple, so it more or less balances out. But I would still like to get as much of a margin as I can, given the uncertain nature of everything at the moment, and also, for the symbolic nature of it, I'd like to cross that threshold. One more! We can do it!

Also, for those getting a little sick of being bombarded with posts on three platforms...yeah, sorry. Again, unstable nature of things means I'm hesitant to trust any one place right now, so I'm doing some redundancy. As things cool a bit, I may go back to my previous method and just post to Itch with links to that from the other platforms. We'll see.

Day 3: Holding Pattern. "Allowing" Itch sales again

New Subcount Progress: Fourth day. Currently at 98 new subs out of 100 minimum. So close!

 Guess I am still making daily posts for now.
 
 I enabled download for the game for half of yesterday and through the night. Before downloads were disabled, on the night of the shadowban GT was downloaded 100 times. In the middle of the night, on a week night. After I re-enabled it, it was downloaded two hundred more. The period download was disabled doesn't even show up on the traffic graph. I'm glad I was able to help people get their copies up to date.

In the half-a-day-and-a-night that download was enabled, the game also sold five times. This happened despite the game being unlisted, despite a total lack of any network effect (at least on Itch), and despite the bold warning on the main page not to buy it. I'm not mad, this is just an observation. There are positive implications to this. And also worth noting that a lot of those (possibly all) were probably archival attempts from people who had always wanted the game but never got around to buying it off their "buy later" collection or whatever.

To state the obvious, we are on day 3 now and the game is still up. Due to continued demand and continued...non-nuking of me by Itch, I am tentatively removing my request to not buy the game, and the warning on the main page. If you want to buy it there, buy it.
 
This does not mean things are back to normal. Far from it. This is me putting my hat on a stick and poking it over the waist-high cover to see if it get riddled with bullets. The way I see it, if I continue on there, there is a 50% chance that if I get banned I won't see the money from say, the next month. That might sound bad, but if I keep downloads off there is a 100% chance I won't. The best way to support me is still via SubscribeStar, but I understand that's just not going to happen for many people. And some people just can't be bothered with all this nonsense, and just want to buy horni gaeme. I can't hate them for that. 
 
So we'll see. We'll roll the dice and we'll see.
 
I anticipate there may be some sentiment of "Well what was the point of the SubscribeStar push then?!" which is understandable, but again, we're not back to normal. All this could still very well collapse tomorrow, or a week from now. But it's been three days, with no further news. A handful of games have been fully banned, but that number doesn't seem to be climbing much. All the big titles I think of when I think Itch NSFW are still up. We're in a holding pattern, and there's no telling how long it lasts. A week? A month? Indefinitely? 
 
I braced for impact and there...wasn't one. Yet. I can still sell the game on Itch. So I'm going to continue to do so.
 
I would also say that while sales are, amazingly, still good, I don't expect this to last. My pages here have had HUGE traffic right now, understandably. That will eventually drop off again, and when it does, with zero search or recommendation visibility, I expect sales to drop to zero. No way of knowing though, we'll have to see.
 
In other news, I am probably going to eventually make a Patreon, for those totally unable to support on SubscribeStar. The chances of said patreon running into trouble are high, so once it's up I still urge everyone who wants to support to try SubscribeStar first, and only go over to P if they're denied. It's also less than ideal because I'll probably be doing it with a linked discord like many do, which will make it effectively inaccessible to those in the UK. But they probably wouldn't be able to view the Patreon in the first place.
 
In other other news, We're within 10 subs of hitting the minimum 100 new subs goal here!Thank you all, and hopefully we can nail that soon. 

Also, there's a poll going on here that got bumped out of sight due to this post. Scroll down a bit and be sure to vote in it if you haven't already.

Update on the situation: Thank you for subscribing on SubscribeStar (please encourage others to do so)

Edit the third: Moving the new sub count progress to the most recent post.

 Trying to keep up with everything, but pardon me if I'm a little slow. Bouncing between a lot of things atm.

Also, the dramatubers/newstubers have arrived. Pick your favorite, they're all here, even Cr1tikal. It's heartening to see that most people seem to grasp the vital core of this: it isn't about porn games. These wackjobs will dismantle most free expression on the internet if they're allowed to continue like this. "Why should I care, I'm not a gooner?" Do you like hot women in media? Violence? Any time of sexuality or relationship other than straight marriage where sex is only hinted at? Cause aaaallll that's going away if this continues.

 Edit the second: You know how I said the Internet loves a villain? Yeah about that. Lol. Lmao even. Looks like someone might have finally poked the hornets nest. And the dramatubers haven't even gotten their teeth into this yet. They might not have bothered, except Itch is now pulling the games it fully kills out of people's libraries as well, without refund, effectively stealing from their customers. So they now appear to be directly stealing from both their customers, AND their creators (no payouts for you if your game is banned!). That's...one of the decisions of all time.

Updates: I am writing this immediately after waking up from four hours of sleep because I want it to go out to my itch followers while I still HAVE itch followers. There may be any number of developments that have happened since that I am not aware of. I'll have to get to them second. Please read the previous post for context first if you haven't.





The game pages on Itch are still up, obviously. My account continues to exist. The shadowban continues.

There is no way to know for sure how long this will last, or what the verdict will be on my page, but I am operating off the assumption that it will be pulled, which I think is a fair estimate.

Which is why I will repeat the heading of this post: I need as many people as possible to subscribe over on SubscribeStar. Losing Itch means losing half my monthly income. Yesterday, before all this started, I was at about 154 subscribers on SS. To patch the hole, accounting for fees and whatnot, I need at least 100 additional subscribers. I'm currently sitting at 160, so 94 to go. This is at a bare minimum: I have "runway" as they say for a few months, but medium to long term I can't continue operating without at least this much.

However, it's worse than that. I basically had a two-mode financial/income model. First, support on SS and a modest but steady flow of continued purchase of previous games brought in enough to cover basics and have a little breathing room on a monthly basis while I was developing the next game. But second, like a farmer, I would (as far as this second mode was concerned) work for "no" money for a while, coax a crop to harvest, and then publish a game and get very large (for me) payoff over the course of a few months, which I would then squirrel away and slowly sip from in case of emergency as I worked on the next chapter.

Do you see the issue? Even if I can stabilize the monthly enough to survive, without itch there will be no harvest. I will release chapter 3 to...nothing. Subscribers get it for free, as they should.

And it's even worse than that. Half the point of Itch was its network effect. People would just be browsing and see a CS game. Not going to happen anymore. People would buy another horny game, see CS in their recommendations, and buy it too (I got a little bump any time any new nsfw game came out). Not going to happen anymore. I have built up a network of my own of over 4000 followers on itch. Followers that see update posts. Followers that show up when the game comes out and buy it. How many of those are going to follow me over to Furaffinity or here? Probably not all.

So, this boils down to one thing. I am going to ask all of you, if you have the money, to do something you should never, ever do.

I'm going to ask you to pre-buy a video game. (https://subscribestar.adult/bitshift)
 
If you want to play Chapter 3, "buy" it now by subscribing for a month. Because if enough people don't in the next few days/weeks, it probably won't happen. Tell any friends/enemies/family/etc you have that you know were also interested that they need to do the same.
 
And let me be crystal clear, I can't guarantee shit on this. Making games is hard, and it's going to be harder with this added stress. I'd put my chances of finishing at pretty high, 80-90%, given my motivation, character and previous experience. But life, including my life, is chaotic. All I can do is the best I can manage. That's why I've doggedly avoided any king of pre-buy in the past. But we're past that now. We're into slimy Kickstarter territory thanks to the hell that is 2025. If you want CS 3 to happen, "buy" it now. Simple as that.
 
And of course, if you can afford to stick around long term, even better! Again, I need at least 94 more of you.
 
How many people will see this? How many people will actually sub? No idea. But again, I have about 4k followers on here. Presumably they all want Chapter 3. If we're optimistic and assume only 1k of that is dead accounts, and of the remaining 3k 2k are willing and able to go through the process of signing up and subbing, that's $20k (a little less after fees), which should be plenty to secure the completion of the game. Maybe they won't show up. Maybe more will (I got much more than my subscribers buying GT on release). Tell people. Spread the word. Subscribe.
 
That said, I'd also like to outline my situation, and why this is all...a bit dire.
 
For at least five years now, possibly a bit more, I've had "fatigue." NOT Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, as far as I can tell, just a fatigue I can't pin down no matter how many things I have tested or lifestyle things I try to shift. It's physical, but triggered by certain kinds of stress in a really weird way. If you tell me "Hey, go dig a ditch in 80 degree weather for four hours", no problem (as long as it's alone and without any pressing deadlines). I actually was doing something similar to this earlier this year. On the other hand, if you shove me into a typical work environment with nightmare customers, boss, co-workers, constant fear of getting fired, rules that change every week etc, I struggle to last more than a few hours.
 
Five ish years ago when it started, pre-pandemic when I actually had two regular jobs, it was only a bite out of my normal working ability. Maybe 20% of the energy I could have spend racking up hours gone. But it's gradually become worse and worse, and it's at the point now where I'm not sure I could even work a normal "shit job" any more (retail, fast food, etc), which is all I can get.
 
I really, really didn't want to share this. I don't like talking about medical stuff in general, I was worried people would eye-roll as they often do ("what a baby, that's not a real thing, just stop being lazy"), I was worried I would hurt people's faith in my ability to finish the game. The games have been a godsend, because there are no co-workers (except for a few great people that help here and there) or bosses, and if I'm having a bad day I can just work less that day, and more the next. I'm fairly confident I can continue work on the game as I have been, assuming the money is there. And just in general, I didn't want people to think I was farming it, pity partying for cash.
 
But things are bad now. Gotta put the cards on the table. And we'll see where we end up. 

And now, time for the grimest poll ever. If you are subscribed, check in with your status:

Itch.io has shadowbanned NSFW games

 I am still taking in what this means.
 
 -1. No communication went out to creators. - Edit: they finally said something, see below.
 
 2. Some searches show some NSFW games, others have been completely cleared out. NSFW and Furry for example lists nothing now.
 
 3. The games still appear in people's libraries, for now. They haven't nuked them entirely.
 
 4. The game pages are still up, at least for now: https://bitshiftgames.itch.io/cruelserenade, https://bitshiftgames.itch.io/cruel.....de-guttertrash.

5. I can still access my dashboard and funds. Needless to say, I've requested a withdrawal of what's currently in their system.

This is...not good. Due to various health issues I don't like to talk about, it's become increasingly difficult/impossible for me to work a normal job. Itch and substar were a lifeline, a chance at putting together a future. Now that may be over.

Things are very bad.

Substar is still up (obviously). Itch was half the income the games made though. Will update with relevant info as I get it.

It seems like all NSFW expression and sexwork is going to be blackmailed off the internet by visa/mastercard the way things are going. Wouldn't be surprised if they even come for FA at this point.

Edit: There is no concrete evidence of this yet, but I would be very surprised if Collective Shout and you-know-who, the people behind the recent Steam purge and a bunch of other nonsense weren't involved with this, directly or indirectly.

Edit the second: They finally have an announcement: https://itch.io/updates/update-on-nsfw-content. And what a surprise I was right, collective shout. For context, these people are so wacko conservative they want to ban generically sexy AAA games, it isn't just niche stuff.
 
On the one hand, glad to have SOME word, and that itch isn't at least immediately dumping everything. On the other:
 
"We are currently conducting a comprehensive audit of content to ensure we can meet the requirements of our payment processors. Pages will remain deindexed as we complete our review. Once this review is complete, we will introduce new compliance measures. For NSFW pages, this will include a new step where creators must confirm that their content is allowable under the policies of the respective payment processors linked to their account.
 
Part of this review will see some pages being permanently removed from itch.io. Affected accounts will be notified via their account’s email address from our support address. You can reply to that email if you have any follow up questions." 

I don't have high hopes that my games will survive this on Itch.

If you aren't already, follow me over on FurAffinity as well: https://www.furaffinity.net/user/bitshift/. People roll their eyes a bit at me still hanging out on such an old, busted site, but it will probably be the last to go before the lights go out entirely.