Honestly, they should if they don’t want it to happen. This is an unresolveable problem for years, that’s unlikely to change now. There is no point in subscribing to a patreon that breaks the rules, then complaining they break the rules which I have seen many times. If there is no incentive not to break the rules, then some will. If writers know people will unsubscribe, that’s the incentive. Alternatively, just leave it as is and accept that some patreons will leave content locked up for extended periods. I’m not a subscriber or owner of any patreons, so it doesn’t really affect me, but it does affect those who have them.
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My understanding is that it’s mostly this, though I admit I don’t really follow the Patreon scene. The team seems extremely busy and I imagine actively keeping track of Patreons, social medias, etc would take a bit of overhead.
I don’t know if a couple of individual authors have worked out agreements with COG separately, but I think mostly it’s a case of a rule that isn’t that well publicised and is seldom enforced, so you end up with a few headaches; some people genuinely won’t have heard of it, some have heard of it and pushed their luck, and others might have seen the second camp of people and noticed they still seem to be doing OK, so follow their cue.
I assume this sort of thing comes in cycles - eventually enough people will openly do it (And enough people will be annoyed by them!) that the company will feel compelled to step in, then everyone will start behaving again. Then the company will turn their focus to other important things, and the cycle will repeat over another couple of years…
Personally - my ideal would be a laxer set of rules that are more strictly enforced - but I’m not sure it’s that much easier for the company to strictly enforce a ‘90 day timer’, for example, than it is a ‘30 day timer’. So that’s maybe a pipe dream.
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While I’m certainly curious about and would like to know personally what the current policy is towards HG WIPs that make most or even all of their content only available to subscribers who pay, I made this post because I think I’m far from the only one who is curious about this and would like to know more. So what I really hoped for was that someone in the know could let the rest of us know publicly what the current policy actually is. Getting a private email from the company explaining their current stance and policy on this issue, is the opposite of that.
Like I wrote in my original post, I think clarity on this issue would be of great benefit to writers and readers/players in general, like by knowing ourselves how to approach this issue, whether we ourselves are considering creating a patreon or discovering a patreon that seems to break the rules and not knowiing whether you’d then want us to report the rulebreakers in question or there’s little point in doing that.
I have assumed that you moderators are among the people who are in the know about the current stance and policy.. If that is correct, I’m asking you or other people in the know, to please let us know what the actual current policy and stance are or, if you’re not allowed to tell(publicly, at least) or have decided that it’s better not to tell(,whether just publicly or both publicly and privately) to please let us know that. I agree that it’s better to have an answer from someone in the know than people just speculating what the current state of affairs is, but for that we need someone in the know to chime in and let us all know how things are, at least as much as you think you can tell.
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I don’t see what incentive a company would have to give up a rule that allows them to pursue people who infringe on the licensing agreement? Even if it isn’t enforced all of the time (or even most of the time). I’d assume it’s a mix of time constraints and how expensive it can get to follow up with every single instance. It’s not like a trademark of course, but I still can’t see the benefit for the company.
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If a rule is not being enforced/made use of, does it matter if it exists? And if the answer is “well, they can use it that one time they’ve had enough…”, would it be fair if only a specific author/patreon (or few specific ones) would be singled out and made example of for something that was neither made widely publicly known nor enforced?
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Well, I guess my argument is more that if I held a copyright and had a licensing agreement that allowed open source use for non-profit cases… I would keep my options open to pursue anyone not adhering to the licensing agreement. Even if I can’t pursue everyone because I might not have the means to do so (whether it’s time, money, or whatever else that is holding me back). Fairness wouldn’t really factor into that decision (for most companies anyway), so what I think is fair is not really the point.
It reminds me a bit of Roko’s basilisk (thought experiment), though, where the best outcome seems to be that you’re just blissfully unaware.
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This question is answered on the COG website’s Write a Hosted Game page which can be found and accessed here.
I’ve copied and pasted the relevant paragraph, which in my opinion is explicitly clear,
" * Some authors have Patreons to help support their writing. Any ChoiceScript-based content that you give to your patrons must be released to the general public within a month of giving your patrons access."
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And while this is absolutely the correct answer, I know this won’t satisfy you, @natwa, because your main question is about policy enforcement – whether the publicly posted policy is a de facto dead letter because it’s not being enforced.
On that front, you may not get the public answer you’re hoping for. If the company doesn’t currently have the capacity to enforce the policy effectively – out of some combo of low staff numbers/ more pressing priorities/ people based in certain country jurisdictions ignoring legal notices – then it might be best served by keeping ambiguity around its enforcement capacity rather than openly saying “we can’t enforce that as much as we’d like.” Silence is sometimes the most prudent policy, even if that’s frustrating to curious fans.
My suggestion is that whenever one of us sees a specific Patreon that’s in violation of the policy, drop a note to CoG letting them know. Let whatever enforcement mechanism they maintain kick in.
As a one-time mod here, I wouldn’t necessarily assume that. The mods are just responsible for this forum, not for CoG’s footprint on Patreon or Reddit or Tumblr; and there are a lot of WIPs here, too many to expect the mods to proactively check which ones might have stuff on Patreon that’s not making its way onto the forums. In general, there’s plenty of company business that only staff (or even only partners) know, not mods.
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This is correct, the moderators don’t have inside knowledge of company policy and when it comes up we direct them to contact the staff. It’s very much outside our jurisdiction.
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While it’s nice to have access to the excact wording in the rules, my question was, as @Havenstone correctly wrote not about the rules as such, but about the actual current stance and policy towards it. In other words, whether the actual rules are meant to be in effect and fully enforced or whether they are the kind of rules that are in practice taken very lightly or even that they have thought about changing or removing but haven’t gotten around to changing or removing yet.
Anyway, thanks to both @HarrisPS and @Havenstone for making clear that the moderators aren’t really in the know about the current policy and stance unlike what I assumed and to Havenstone for, as usual giving an insightful answers, including both good reasons for why the staff haven’t spoken about this publicly and for good advice about what to when discovering HG WIPs that seem to be in violation of the current rules.
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Yes, they are in effect.
If you have concerns about a particular game, please feel free to reach out to support.
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Well, you would be assuming incorrectly. I cannot speak for other moderators, but I’ve not been tuned into what the current policy is for this.
Up to you where you want to go from here. 
I can’t answer your inquiry, but I’ve pointed you to where you can find the answer directly.
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I know people won’t agree with me, but I don’t like patreon. I’ve followed someone before because I thought it would be update monthly. It wasn’t. A lot of patreon writers haven’t updated in months if not a couple years. I also followed another one then they completely changed it and rewrote it to the point it was unrecognizable. I ended up not liking the new story. I don’t really think people should have to pay for an unfinished product. Many game designers and book authors don’t make any money until the finished product is released. They spend their own money to fund their projects. I feel like patreon is just a way to milk more money out of people who are going to buy your game when it’s finished anyways.
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And no one has to! That’s the great thing about Patreon: it’s entirely voluntary. Don’t like what an author is offering? Don’t be their patron.
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I mean, I assume most authors who have Patreons do that because they don’t have money to spend. It’s so much easier to write if you can pay rent.
(Many game designers and book authors get outside funding, too.)
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