Rant post - beware (Patreon)

As the title says, if you don't want a dev see ranting about internet stuff, close this post.

So the 0.5 version got leaked earlier to a certain pirate site.
And to make it fully clear: I knew this was going to happen at some point.
In fact, I'm active there and quite a few of you guys here came through that site.
I enjoyed the discussions there (most of the time...) and got good feedback.
I'm not blaming the site, of course, it is what it is.

But honestly, I hoped for at least a bit of exclusivity for this update.
At least until the update dropped for the 5$ tier.
I worked my ass off for this update. If I count the time spent on the game as work time (usually I have fun so it's not as bad as it sounds...), I worked 70-80 hours a week (mind you, I have a full-time job) since the start of the year and the development of Chapter 5.

Why am I saying that? Because I can't understand how people value that effort so lowly, that I can't even get a week of exclusivity for a new release.
Hell, I can't even understand why some people value their own 13$ so lowly that they're worth 30 seconds of internet fame.

I'm pretty open about development speed, things that went well or bad, and stuff like that.
So I'll be open about the income for this game too.
Before the update dropped, I had 88 paying patrons (THANK YOU) and ~300$ a month. That is before taxes and stuff. In my country, I get barely 50% out of that after taxes.
With the release, that went up to 121 paying patrons and 579$/month as of the time writing this post.
I fully expect that to drop once the release month is over. And that is fine!
The reason I tell you this is to show that I'm not one of the big devs who pull in thousands of dollars a month and who are barely affected by the game getting leaked.
For me, it will affect me. And it will HURT (financially speaking).

So not even getting a single week after a release fucking sucks.

Yes, I'm fully aware that I'm pointing at the leaked version with this post but I need to get this out of my system.

As a result, I'll make the update available to the 5$ tier later when I calmed down.
Not that I expect it to matter anyway at this point.

To close this post:
To anyone who supports me (and it doesn't matter what amount and for how long): Thank you! I appreciate every one of you.

Rant over - enough internet for me today.

Stay safe guys.

Cheers,
Ceo