discussion Absolute game drought ?

[saderen]

Hello everyone !

I want to hear everyone's opinion on this topic that has been on my mind for the last few months. I have been active in the adult game community since 2017 and in my opinion it's currently the worst it's ever been in terms of game releases, abandoned games, game/fetish variance and AI slop.

Most games feel very same-ish (models, lighting, environment, game ideas/story). We could definitely argue that the amount of games has increased, but with a substantial decrease in terms of quality. Unique looking models, coherent story and fetishes like incest are basically dead.

Futhermore, new "Plus" games are basically non-existent (other than Blackheart Games). Most of them are abandoned or have virtually no content with 0.1 release. I consider this "genre" dead, meaning we get possibly one interesting update or a new game release per 3-4 months.

Could we attribute this to credit cards companies, more strict laws and the rise of AI and surveillance ? What is everyone's opinion ?

 

[xpop49]

The AI deep fakes were a huge part of this,

Till then nobody really cared about our weeby 2D and 3D Sprites we used to goon to.


I can't even find one of my fav games blended family anywhere now

 

[ErzuzB]

Could we attribute this to credit cards companies, more strict laws and the rise of AI and surveillance ? What is everyone's opinion ?

Sure that's a big part of it, but that's certainly not all.

Back then, before 2020, everything was still fresh and new for the western porn game community, so many new models, designs, stories and possibilities existed to explore for devs and players.
Not to forget that many players or even devs where pretty new to porn games.

During the Covid lockdowns the interest rose not only in seeing those games, but also in making them, even if only as a pastime. And since people had fewer things to spend their money on (after all, they could hardly go out), they started spending more on porn games.
This, however, motivated even more people to make these games, nice in theory, but it also was the beginning of oversaturation, because the more people are making games for monetary gain, the more bad/simple/repetitive games will come out, mostly with the same DAZ or VAM models or barely edited IllusionGames models and with extremely similar stories/plots.

Obviously it was a slow process, because you wouldn't notice them all, after all the diamonds were still shining bright.

But as the lockdown was gone and everything slowly normalized (yes it took years after it ended), more and more of the passionate devs slowed down or stopped, their pastime wasn't forced to make games anymore. However those that wanted money or at least a few quick bucks still made games and it was easier than ever to quickly make new games, because so many pirated models, new and cheaper pcs and their components, which meant it was easier to make good looking renders, and all the easy to follow guides because of all the years of porn game making.
Not to forget that those usually tried to please the most popular genres or stuff so much into their games that no genre was really there anymore.
But making money with porn games isn't such an easy thing, and most give up after a bit or. Also because the subscription model Patreon & Co encourage it, milking their supporters was the the best work/gain method.

And then in the last couple of years all the ballkicking of the credit card companies, white knights and harsher laws started to intensifiy.
Taboo games couldn't be sold supported anymore, those devs stopped or changed to safe genres (they want money after all, even all those big highly praised devs that were not supposed to be like those cheap devs). Which meant even less variety.

Then the AI wave hit harder and harder, because it was easier then ever to make games, not only to do the art, but to code them or let the AI write the story.
BTW there are way waaay less people who hate AI porn than one would expect, sex sells even if it's AI.


TL;DR
The interest in porn game making shrunk after the golden years during the lockdown.

 

[DreamingWizard]

Are you talking exclusively about western adult games? Their situation has been pretty bad for quite some time now, a lot of games, promising or not, stuck in development/patreon hell, but this has been the case since long ago. Laws and their enforcement do seem to have gotten worse, see f95 for example, a bunch of games are/were removed from there, or game mods websites, they remove a lot of stuff either because the mods are powertripping or scared they'll get sued. The credit card company censorship surely does help, but you can still find stuff if you know where to look.

 

[nuzzyfipples]

I don't think there's a drought overall if you are into generic porn games.
If you're into niche games then maybe there is, but not for all. Like loli games - a definite drought. Futa games though, seems like there's a new one every day.

 

[hathgarniche]

Its definitely getting harder to make. However i also think there is a sought of, idea of money making industry to more and more devs these days. Less are making games they want to make, for the sake of making the art.

 

[HTYYHRK]

There's more slop, sure, but even the slop is higher quality than what was being produced a few years ago. Maybe this is a controversial opinion, but baseline AI images look better to me than a lot of old versions of 3D models or poor quality hand drawn images. Moreover, it's vastly expanded the number of games targeting niches, since the barrier to entry is so much lower.
It is unfortunate how many abandoned v1s there are, but I don't judge the industry by it's failures.

 

[CubbyBuddy]

There's more slop, sure, but even the slop is higher quality than what was being produced a few years ago. Maybe this is a controversial opinion, but baseline AI images look better to me than a lot of old versions of 3D models or poor quality hand drawn images. Moreover, it's vastly expanded the number of games targeting niches, since the barrier to entry is so much lower.
It is unfortunate how many abandoned v1s there are, but I don't judge the industry by it's failures.

Sturgeon's law: 90% of everything is crap

 

[Redyscom]

When it comes to the Game+ section, you’re absolutely right—we’ve lost a lot of developers along the way, other games have been abandoned, and there are few left, with even fewer new ones coming out. A lot of people are always giving us a hard time about not uploading or updating the games in that section, but if there’s nothing to upload, there’s nothing we can do.

 

[Dip!]

I think it entirely depends on your taste and standards and what your willing to buy.

I'm very vanilla (in terms of actions) but i NEED a story or characters that I can get attached too in order to get into the mood. So I'm not terribly in the lack of games.

Honestly right now, porn games (western) is just in a spot where the tech is available to anyone. So even if we didn't have the credit card companies having more power/influence then governments. We would just have more bad/"bad" quantity of games.

For me, I'm still figuring out japanese games. As a primarily phone user, it can be difficult if i can't emulate though.

But there are things building up. I just hope the end result is not too bad or has work arounds.

 

[PliminJET]

I think it entirely depends on your taste and standards and what your willing to buy.

I'm very vanilla (in terms of actions) but i NEED a story or characters that I can get attached too in order to get into the mood. So I'm not terribly in the lack of games.

Honestly right now, porn games (western) is just in a spot where the tech is available to anyone. So even if we didn't have the credit card companies having more power/influence then governments. We would just have more bad/"bad" quantity of games.

For me, I'm still figuring out japanese games. As a primarily phone user, it can be difficult if i can't emulate though.

But there are things building up. I just hope the end result is not too bad or has work arounds.

Things are building up for sure but the end result will always have workarounds. Ease of access is basically what is being attacked right now. Luckily for pervs, ease of access also effects other places of the broader internet so we also have normal friends to fight along with.

 

[Abere Lucifer]

I'm a dev that got in before the end of Covid. What's happened is since the end of the Covid Boom of Adult Games a lot of folk saw the money that was being made during the Boom and decided "Hey, that looks like an easy money." This started the Massive Boom of Slop which has gotten worse with AI. The thing is that since Covid ended folks aren't stuck in their houses playing adult games as much. That means you have less players but a big number of devs trying to make money from the shrinking player numbers. This reality is causing a lot of new devs to abandoned their games. The stuff with the payment processors is making things even worse. I used to make loli games but I saw all this insanity coming so I pivoted away. A lot of other devs did not and it's now catching up with them. This is causing games to be abounded also. Also the massive amount of devs that are extremely lazy is fucking insane. This cause updates to take forever to be made which pisses of players which makes them more suspicious of devs and who they give money to which causes even more games to be abandoned. All this causes games that are actually unique herded to find. I could go on for a good while. There's a few other reasons also but I'm half awake and need some sleep.

 

[PliminJET]

I'm a dev that got in before the end of Covid. What's happened is since the end of the Covid Boom of Adult Games a lot of folk saw the money that was being made during the Boom and decided "Hey, that looks like an easy money." This started the Massive Boom of Slop which has gotten worse with AI. The thing is that since Covid ended folks aren't stuck in their houses playing adult games as much. That means you have less players but a big number of devs trying to make money from the shrinking player numbers. This reality is causing a lot of new devs to abandoned their games. The stuff with the payment processors is making things even worse. I used to make loli games but I saw all this insanity coming so I pivoted away. A lot of other devs did not and it's now catching up with them. This is causing games to be abounded also. Also the massive amount of devs that are extremely lazy is fucking insane. This cause updates to take forever to be made which pisses of players which makes them more suspicious of devs and who they give money to which causes even more games to be abandoned. All this causes games that are actually unique herded to find. I could go on for a good while. There's a few other reasons also but I'm half awake and need some sleep.

No, I'm actually seeing positive reception in new games that are fully complete. The main problem is I see most new games release a version along the lines of 0.3 or 0.11 and they get shit on for not having any content, rightly so. They try to copy the method of popular VN devs with a subscription based model to shortcut their time to cash but get demotivated when nobody likes their effortless, lazy, incomplete game.

 

[Abere Lucifer]

No, I'm actually seeing positive reception in new games that are fully complete. The main problem is I see most new games release a version along the lines of 0.3 or 0.11 and they get shit on for not having any content, rightly so. They try to copy the method of popular VN devs with a subscription based model to shortcut their time to cash but get demotivated when nobody likes their effortless, lazy, incomplete game.

Oh, a newbie. Trying to get those points ain't ya?

 

[ObservantShadow]

Hello everyone !

I want to hear everyone's opinion on this topic that has been on my mind for the last few months. I have been active in the adult game community since 2017 and in my opinion it's currently the worst it's ever been in terms of game releases, abandoned games, game/fetish variance and AI slop.

Most games feel very same-ish (models, lighting, environment, game ideas/story). We could definitely argue that the amount of them has increased with a big decrease in terms of quality (unique looking models/girls, coherent story) and fetishes like incest are basically dead.

Futhermore, new "Plus" games are basically non-existent other than Blackheart Games. Most of them are abandoned or have virtually no content with 0.1 release. I consider this "genre" dead meaning we get maybe one interesting update or release per 3-4 months.

Could we attribute this to credit cards companies, more strict laws and the rise of AI and surveillance ? What is everyone's opinion ?

The Grand majority of Plus games have been abandoned like Money or Morals

The games that remain take a very long time to update because there's only 1 dev working on each game

Like More than a Daughter

 

[Turbo12345]

sadly it seems like the smol/plus genre is barely clinging on. all thanks to those fucking scummy payment processors. the community needs to find a way to fund these games thru crypto or else this genre will be cooked

 

[NateH]

If Flash is dead that means no more little games for browsers. Flash gaming changed the world and has barely gone down in popularity before the announcement of it's death.

AI could have been a blessing if we had a compact game engine like Flash that could have benefited from it (and no, I don't wanna hear about the HTML syssyfier simulators or anything where the text is copy-pasted from chat wish some porn GIFs added)

 

[saderen]

I'm a dev that got in before the end of Covid. What's happened is since the end of the Covid Boom of Adult Games a lot of folk saw the money that was being made during the Boom and decided "Hey, that looks like an easy money." This started the Massive Boom of Slop which has gotten worse with AI. The thing is that since Covid ended folks aren't stuck in their houses playing adult games as much. That means you have less players but a big number of devs trying to make money from the shrinking player numbers. This reality is causing a lot of new devs to abandoned their games. The stuff with the payment processors is making things even worse. I used to make loli games but I saw all this insanity coming so I pivoted away. A lot of other devs did not and it's now catching up with them. This is causing games to be abounded also. Also the massive amount of devs that are extremely lazy is fucking insane. This cause updates to take forever to be made which pisses of players which makes them more suspicious of devs and who they give money to which causes even more games to be abandoned. All this causes games that are actually unique herded to find. I could go on for a good while. There's a few other reasons also but I'm half awake and need some sleep.

Thanks for the insight - hard agree.

I would basically summarize it as overinflation of adult games market (thanks to the COVID) and conversion to a business focused endeavor. I very much so viewed the devs as hobbyists from 2017-2020 which does explain the broader variety of past games, unique ideas and fetishes instead of catering to a "modern audience" (for a lack of a better term). That also explains the decimation of fetishes. incest and also loli games.

Meaning business = money, money = payment processors, payment processors = surveillance and censorship.

To be honest, I wasn't expecting adult games to be affected by this so quickly. It does seem that COVID very much hastened the progression to the business side of things which ultimately ruined majority of the adult games for me.

Post automatically merged: Today at 2:54 AM

When it comes to the Game+ section, you’re absolutely right—we’ve lost a lot of developers along the way, other games have been abandoned, and there are few left, with even fewer new ones coming out. A lot of people are always giving us a hard time about not uploading or updating the games in that section, but if there’s nothing to upload, there’s nothing we can do.

Very true. In my view the population of this site is rapidly growing as does the interest for these games, but ironically as the interest grows - these games cease to exist.

More interest and fundamentally no new games or updates to the existing ones.

Post automatically merged: Today at 3:12 AM

Furthermore, as a person who has previously tried tinkering with DAZ3D in the past years - the barrier of entry into the creation aspect is absolutely huge. I would say this is absolutely the biggest factor that most people don't think about, as none of them have used DAZ3D before.

I do find that it takes extreme amount of time to put out one rendered image and after 6 or so finished renders I gave up on creating any games myself. Don't even get me started on animations... one second of animation took like 30 minutes which is absolutely crazy to me.

So imagine, as a dev - you have to:

1. Finance the needed hardware
2. Learn all the required skills
3. Have the patience to wait for these renders which also means you can't use the computer during this time
4. Takes a toll on your hardware = shorter lifespan = more investments

And as reward your product is extremely hard to monetize and has to be vanilla themed to succeed and be allowed on most sites.

If you put all these things together, the current state of adult games is not that shocking anymore.

 

[bigusdickus233]

biggest issue imo is how saturated the market is. So many people making games now, especially with how easy it is with AI helpers. On top of that around pandemic people learned just how much money there is in making a patreon and just advertising adult games, not finishing them. So we attracted get rich quick scammers as well. Unfortunate but what can ya do

 

[UZTO]

Futhermore, new "Plus" games are basically non-existent (other than Blackheart Games). Most of them are abandoned or have virtually no content with 0.1 release. I consider this "genre" dead, meaning we get possibly one interesting update or a new game release per 3-4 months.

Could we attribute this to credit cards companies, more strict laws and the rise of AI and surveillance ? What is everyone's opinion ?

Glad to hear the Plus section is just as dead as everywhere else. It was a pretty dumb idea to gatekeep the small amount of taboo games being made to an even smaller audience. Imagine what it must feel like being a developer in this era of AI slop flooding the internet, payment processors banning your product, governments censoring fetishes and then you've got the last site that allowed your content now saying, "Only those who give us money get to play your games."

Yeah, we're in a games drought alright. Nobody's motivated to do anything anymore and this place bottlenecking their potential reach ain't helping the situation.