Hey everyone! ^^ I hope December is treating you all well so far! Typically I only do the monthly development report post for the public and maybe something else, but just for December, I think it's important to keep everyone informed.
In case you missed it, Patreon purged a ton of abdl content creators from their platform about 2 weeks ago by this point? Many creators ended up going to sub star or fanbox, etc. I'm sorry for repeating this for those who have heard enough about the situation, but I just want to let it be known for anyone following us through other platforms and reading this.
If you were following or supporting Messy Academy on Patreon. We have no access to anything from Patreon anymore since 2 weeks ago, our account was deactivated by their support with zero warning. What I mean by that is, typically they send a email and put your account on halt, reach back out to them and do what they ask in order to fix whatever the issue is. (That didn't happen to myself or other creators, it was the same email excuse and they didn't want to hear it any further, waving many of us off.)
What I'm trying to get at is that, if you were following or supporting us on Patreon. If by some odd reason it shows you're still supporting our Patreon page, contact their support team for a refund. We can't even login to the account to access our tax information for the upcoming tax season. Any access we had to patrons, messages, information, posts and anything to do with Patreon is gone.
If you wish to support Messy Academy and the team, our main hub area is on sub star. If you've never heard of it before, it's very similar to Patreon in layout and purposes for content creators.
https://subscribestar.adult/messyacademy[Support, goals and thanks!]On a note about our sub star and support, I'm happy to announce that we're officially halfway to our monthly goal! A little over it actually, but we hope that with the planned releases for this month for both public and supporters in mind. That it'll help boost that as well, as we'd like to move into January and provide new content on a monthly basis!
I'd like to personally say thank you everyone! <3
I know our development has been in a rough place for a while and we were in the process of just getting out of that rough spot when the whole Patreon situation hit us. >.< We still have a lot to do to prove ourselves as we move into 2024 even once v0.20's content is fully out this month, but we hope to provide more quality content.
With the mention of support. I'd like to warn everyone now that our ideal plan into 2024 is to continue development uninterrupted. But, if by chance we can't reach our goal. The first thing that it'd impact is new cg scenes being added to new content. CG art is the most expensive aspect of our team's costs and naturally they're these spotlight moments in-game.
I don't say that to scare anyone, but it's just to be mindful of how funding can impact development and what we can provide for everyone. Again, our dream goal is not to even let this outcome become a reality as 2024 hits, but it'll depend on myself, the team and the amazing support from our fans.
Huge thank you to everyone for being patient with us and being more than understanding in the past with us! <3
[v0.20 content and the future!]Now, for the moment everyone has been very patiently awaiting! What's the status on the content for December?
We were hoping to get v0.20 pt 3 released during this past weekend, but there were a few factors that prevented us from getting it out. Besides a bit of bug/issues fixing to ensure we don't make our list of problems bigger into 2024.. ^^" One of the cg scenes seen within this content is nearly done and should be sent to me.. Honestly, at any moment this week.
Normally I wouldn't wait for cg art and hold things back, since it's not a problem to replace temp art placeholder images with the finished ones. This cg scene however, includes animated variants that wasn't originally planned and so we had to make some on the fly writing tweaks to the script in this one area to match up with the visuals better.
It might seem silly, but I think first impressions of new content is fairly important as well. That isn't to say we should purposely delay things all the time, but in this case with the scene in question. I know it'd leave a better impact on the player, if it came across in the ideal way vs being meh.
Okay, so without my wordy sea of text hiding anything... Below is our plan! Good news mixed with a little eh?! News!
v0.20 pt 3 for supporters is releasing tonight! v0.20 pt 1 & 2 will become free to the public fans also tonight! (pt 1 & 2 are simply rolled into one download)v0.20 pt 1 & 2 will feature two scenes that begin Episode 5 for the public, about 30 minutes of content give or take.
v0.20 pt 3 will feature one new scene that continues from where pt 2 left off, about 30 minutes of content give or take.
Now, you're asking yourselves... "What?! Wasn't pt 3 supposed to have like 3-4 scenes?"
Yes, as mentioned we're waiting on the cg scene stuff I talked about. We know it'll be done this week and so supporters will also receive the next 3 scenes that are supposed to be part of v0.20 pt 3 this weekend. We wanted to provide what content we could in the mean time, you can play stuff now or hold off for the other scenes if you wish. (The other 3 scenes provide around 30 minutes of content as well, on top of the one provided tonight. It's a big episode... ^^" )
Next! What happens after this weekend?
v0.20 pt 4 is roughly expected for later in the next week, probably... Friday since releases earlier in the week are rough for me to do typically. This last part of v0.20 will feature 3 scenes (About 45 minutes of content.) with a brief ending moment that'll leave many possibly tossing around theories and hype for the future content to see how the main story unfolds.
We'll then begin to pace out the content from pt 3 & 4 to the public, but as we head into January. Just understand that it'll be a wait until out next public version of the game is out. v0.21 is ideally ready by the end of January for supporters only and this will begin our typical expectations between supporter vs public content.
(In other words, while the public has v0.20 in full to enjoy. Supporters will have v0.21 content exclusively for January. Then around late February, supporters gain the exclusive v0.22 content and the public will receive access to the past v0.21 content a month after it was exclusive to supporters. Hope that makes sense, that's how we typically handle the difference for being a supporter vs public content for benefits.)
[Wrap it up!]This post is a bit too long.. ^^" Time to end things!
I've kind of answered this one before, but last month when we still had Patreon and access to everything. We were trying to provide v0.20 in full to anyone who had supported us in the past, but clearly we have no records to prove to us who supported what or if they did, making that plan kind of fall through... >.< Not that we or any other content creators expected the outcome from Patreon, a few were lucky with grabbing their data from Patreon before being banned. We weren't so lucky.
Knowing that, we want to ensure we still provide v0.20 in full to the public in a timely fashion, faster than we normally provide content between supporter vs public releases to make it up for Patreon's actions... But, please understand this isn't expected with content, come January 2024. We rely heavily on support and while we make time and enjoy communicating with everyone that loves our game regardless. We also ensure we provide fair exclusive benefits for our supporters, because the funding is what helps fuel the rest of our team's skills to provide new content for the game as a whole.
That said, we hope we're handling things as fairly as we can given our situation and with the momentum being seen with v0.20's content so far, we don't want to let that slow down and run into other issues for development any further. We owe it to many of you and we hope to prove that heading into 2024! <3
~Messy Studios