re: the programmer
The project
started with a programmer, they even mentioned this multiple times, but the programmer they
started with left because they got a more lucrative job offer. They're currently in the
process of hiring a new programmer because of it -- which is way more than what HBomb has done both recently and in the past when faced with similar issues.
Also, remember -- if you've bothered to read up on the situation -- S-Purple's original plan was to have way more of the project (including the hiring of devs) completed than what he has now; it was H-Bomb
threatening him and saying that he "had not choice but to sell him the art assets he owned," if he was leaving because "he [HBomb] holds all the funds he needs and that it would be financially unsound for me [S-Purple] to actually take legal action against him." And
that came about because HBomb learned that Meadows was in development and S-Purple planned to soon leave the team along with its other members.
I'll agree both could have handled the situation better, and that a lot of the choices made that people are upset about are
moral choices on the part of S-Purple; but people are talking as if they know 100% of what's going on, here.
Searching for a programmer is really hard, he deserves to be paid a lot of money a month to do so. /sarcasm
Nowhere in anything that S-Purple has written about the situation -- that I've read -- has he asked people to donate to Meadows. He's publicly stated that anyone from BS interested in checking the product out will have free access to it for three months after they prove they had backed Breeding Season previously. The post literally reads: "If you have records of having supported Breeding Season, for the next 3 months of releases after we receive that message we will send you our $5.00 patron reward tier to the email provided. This is refundable at any time during our development cycle, and is meant to give you a chance at deciding for yourself, if we can make good on the spirit of Breeding Season before deciding to support us or not."
People are so quick to judge and jump to conclusions that they're missing things like this -- and, again: I've said it elsewhere that it's perfectly fine to be skeptical, it's fine to be wary about the situation because of the drama involved; but I think the Meadows team -- which has barely had their Patron open for a week at this point -- is trying their hardest to show they mean to be as professional as possible going forward. The project started with a Manager
and a Programmer, and once the programmer left they made it their mission to go about trying to hire a new one. (Their first goal is to even make enough to pay said programmer full time, c'mon.)
Breeding Season, meanwhile, had none of this when it first started out, and its lead developer -- HBomb -- already had a reputation for flaking out on projects.
But that doesn't make S the good guy, after what we have seen of him. He has proved to be a real asshole. And I choose not to suck his dick, for how he went through to do this. But you are free to do so.
I am actually surprised people are fine with him suddenly starting a new project, by actually daring to ask for even more money.
And you're free to believe his moral choices are wrong. That's fine. I personally don't see anything wrong with attempting to protect your livelihood and professional reputation when an employer is risking all of it to failure by being lazy and incompetent. (Or, look at it this way: even if he had sold the assets and left quietly with everyone else, I feel everyone would still say was an asshole for letting HBomb get away with it for so long as BS died a slow, slow death
while still racking in tens of thousands of dollars a month from non-updates. Plus, selling him the rights to the designs means that H-Bomb would actually have a legal standing to destroy S-Purple's game for being "too artistically similar," to his own; he'd be able to stonewall
any farming/breeding-based H-Game S-Purple felt like making, or at least make it very difficult for him to go through with his plans, if he so chose. Perpetually.)
And, again: S-Purple hasn't overtly asked for money -- to my knowledge -- for the project. He's branded it as his attempt "to give fans of Breeding Season an opportunity to play a similar game," due to what he believed the inevitable cancellation of Breeding Season (his moral decision), but he's given anyone from the BS side of patreon free access to check out the game for 3 months if they so choose.
If you argument is that he should make that same offer to people who never backed BS, I'm going to have to ask you why you think that's appropriate here when no other Patreon for a game has ever done the same? (I'm honestly curious, no sarcasm.)