The story (so far)

So last Wednesday (not yesterday, obviously, the Wednesday before) I was out with some buddies playing pub trivia, as I usually am on Wednesdays. I start hearing rumblings on my phone about how Patreon is starting to more strictly enforce their content guidelines, that MrDots had been suspended, how devs should start scrubbing their pages of any objectionable content.

I do what I can from my phone, which is basically delete any mention of "the i word" and a few other things. When I get home I make some more changes, removing any sexually suggestive images from the page and the reward column, scrubbing everything I thought they could find the least bit objectionable. I did not touch any of the posts behind a paywall because the rumor going around in dev circles was that those were OK, that Patreon was only concerned with what was publicly facing.

So I go to sleep, feeling fairly safe. After all, I'm just small potatoes here with 400 patrons and I'd done everything suggested to me. There are games with far more extreme content than mine that are far more popular, I thought. Nothing to worry about.

The next morning I wake up hungover (I tend to drink too much on trivia nights) around 4pm ready to work, when I find a lovely email from Patreon informing me that my page had been suspended as it was in violation of community guidelines. The email is extremely generic with no specific instructions, just basically a rehash of the community guidelines. It ended with: "Please don’t hesitate to reach out, we are happy to answer any questions you have about this process."

The first thing I did was head to my Patreon page to see what it looks like to be suspended. As it turns out, they put a big banner over the top of your page which tells you to contact guidelines@patreon.com. So after scrubbing my page of anything I thought they could possibly find objectionable (basically how it looks now with one exception which I will get to later), that's what I did, I emailed guidelines@patreon.com. As requested.

I wait a day and hear nothing. Then shortly before Patreon's close of business on Friday I receive an email from the agent who had emailed me previously:

 Hello again,

I am following up from the message I sent yesterday. 
Please take the weekend to make the necessary changes.

I am away for the weekend, but I will check on your page on Monday morning. If you have any questions in the meantime, feel free to reach out to me. 

Apparently she was not aware of the message I sent to guidelines@patreon.com (which, again, is what you are instructed to do from your home page). So I reply:

Hello. Apparently there has been a misunderstanding. Since yesterday I have been attempting to reply to you using the email address suggested on my suspended homepage (guidelines@patreon.com) rather than to your email directly. Several hours after I realized what had happened I had made changes to the page which I hoped were sufficient, but continued getting no reply from Patreon.

By now I have completely scrubbed the page of any mention of sex and went through all my posts to make sure no titles are explicitly sexual either. I've removed any mention of there being a family at all. I've added a prominent disclaimer that all characters in the game are 18+ (I had one before as well, only less prominent). All posts except for the most innocuous "Thanks for supporting me" type posts have been removed from public availability. Even through the paywall, I've deleted or edited many posts which may be construed as glorifying sexual violence. I'm not sure what else I can do, but if there is something, let me know.

Thanks,

Ron

Of course, I hear nothing over the weekend, but I continue to look for anything else objectionable and scrub what I can.

On Monday afternoon I've still yet to hear anything (remember, I was told the page would be looked at Monday morning), so I send an email back to the agent indicating that I am still waiting for an update on the situation. I get no response for the rest of the day.

Finally, the next day around 11PDT, I receive a response (I've censored "the i-word" in the email just to be safe):

I have taken a look at your creator page and see existing published posts that reference i********* relationships -- please edit or remove these posts.

In addition, a disclaimer regarding the ages of the characters is insufficient. If a character is perceived to be a minor, we will assume that they are a minor. Refrain from rendering your characters in a way in which they will be perceived as minors going forward. The character featured in your About Me and the Reward Tiers looks underage -- I suggest you remove these images and continue developing the character to look older.

I would be happy to provide you further guidance regarding your future content going forward. 

The image she is referring to is the one of Kaitlyn standing in the classroom. Fully clothed. I can't link it now, obviously, but you know the one. I find this absurd for several reasons: first, because Kaitlyn looks and acts at least 18 (which is much more than be said for the characters in dozens of other, more prominent games), and second because there is simply nothing on my home page now to indicate that there is sex in the game at all. But, of course, I dutifully comply, without complaint, and remove the images.

As for the references to i********* relationships, I had previously been under the impression that content behind a paywall was safe, but apparently that is not the case.

So I sift through dozens if not hundreds of old posts, sanitizing as best I can. This is not an easy task as the interface is quite poor and there is no search function. In the mean time I reply to the agent to request time stamps for the offending posts but never get a response to that request. At 3PDT on Tuesday I reply to the agent that I believe I have went through all of my posts removing any mention of D at all.

This time I actually receive an impressively quick response, which gives me hope. Only 30 minutes later the agent has responded to me, letting me know that there are still several posts with references to D (I wish I had her search tools), so I go back sifting through all of the posts once again.

I found a few that I had missed, and within a half hour I had removed them and replied to the agent:

I went through and changed everything I can find. It's easy for something to slip through the cracks with so many posts. Hopefully I found everything, but if there are any more it would be a great help if you could provide a date for the post.

Thanks,

Ron

I hear nothing for 24 hours. At this point I am worried that once I do finally receive a response I will either have missed something or some new issue will be brought up that will need to be dealt with before my page can be reinstated. And of course it'd be day after day after day waiting for replies, just dealing with whatever while my page remained in limbo. 

So I made the decision to simply remove every single post from my page.

I informed the agent of this decision at 10:48PDT on Thursday. At 2:57PDT I get a reply:

Thank you for getting back to me and for making those changes. 

Your account has been reactivated and everything should be good to go. If you notice anything unusual, please answer this email directly and I will look into it.

To reiterate a line from my initial message: "You cannot fund or link to any site that includes explicit depictions (spoken, visual or written) of this type of content." This includes direct messages to your patrons.

Since i***** and the sexualized depiction of minors are the themes of your game, we suggest that you render your characters in a way that they are unmistakably perceived as adults, as well as alter the theme of i***** that is in your game. 

Going forward, we hope that the content that you produce will fall under our Community Guidelines. Please let us know if you have any questions or concerns - we'd be happy to help.  

The bolding of that paragraph is from me . This appears to be a warning that Patreon is not only concerned with the content present on their website, but also with the product itself. In other words: don't link your game as-is or you'll be in violation of the community guidelines. 

This is quite confusing, as games like DMD were cleared within hours and presumably still feature download links. Was it expected that all "i-word" content was scrubbed from that link, the game itself, when the entire game revolves around it? If not, DMD would immediately be back in violation of the community guidelines, assuming any links to the game are still present.

And then of course there are still games like Big Brother which has a public facing page that seems to flagrantly violate multiple community guidelines. Blatant references to "the i word", and sex acts, girls who appear to be minors (at least according to the standards to which I've been held), a boy who appears to be around fifteen. Nudity and graphic sexual content. Ironically, if I were to link to Big Brother's Patreon page I would personally be in violation of the community guidelines as conveyed to me.

I don't mean to pick on any devs, I wish them the best and hope they don't have to face the kind of hassle that I have had to face. I'm mentioning them because they are the most prominent examples and therefore the most prominent examples of the hypocrisy at work here.

So what to do? Well I'm hard at work on 1.7, and I'm doing everything I can to adhere to the community guidelines while still providing the guys the content you're after.

In the mean time most of my updates will consists of polls or text as it's simply unclear what constitutes someone who looks like a minor to Patreon.

Thanks to everyone who supports me and everyone who somehow managed to make it through this wall of text.

In closing I'd just like to make a few requests: please refrain from using "the i word" or "the D word" in the comments, as I'm told that can be problematic even coming from patrons, not only the creator himself. If you have any specific concerns about the direction of the game come find me in Discord rather than asking below—I'm there most of the day. 

Also, please no personal attacks against this agent in the comments section (or anywhere else, for that matter) as there is nothing good that can come from that.

Anyway, thanks again, and hopefully next time you hear from me it will be with actual game-related news.