-Is patreon for the 'hip' game devs (among other things) that like to suck in unknowing victims, bleeding money from them on a monthly?

-Is it more dangerous than Kickstarter (and similar crowdfunders) because you're not just giving one lump sum of money, but a constant? I mean, at least with Kickstarter, don't you get your money back if the goal is not met? With Patreon, it seems like there's absolutely no insurance besides your own choice to continue supporting it or not. Imagine the monthly support for something like Divinity: Original Sin if just everyone one of the backers gave them $1/month. Now imagine if $1 wasn't enough to actually get your hands on a copy of the game upon release, or if you'd get something super special for much higher contributions?

I guess my main gripe with this is Yandere Simulator. It has a $1+ tier, and a $100+ tier. $1 or more does well, nothing but support them. $100 or more apparently lets you put your logo splash at the front of the game, and it's allowed to be skipped instantly. That's it... there's no special benefits for being a support at all, not even a proper place for supporter suggestions for the game. The developer has flat out said 'NO EMAILS FOR SUGGESTIONS' or anything of that nature besides bug reports. Supporters get the same basic access that anyone gets, which seems like total BS.

At the moment he is at over $4,500/month with the $5,000 mark allowing him to add 'professional' volunteer(s) to share $1500/month between them. That's pretty decent income for someone in the US, right? According to the game's website it's only 5% done, and that's been quite some time.

Last question - if you started a Patreon, would you give more exclusive right to your supporters? How would you go about it?
Link to the Patreon in question: https://www.patreon.com/YandereDev?ty=h

I'm trying very hard, but I can't see anything even remotely questionable here.

That depends on how the account is set up. Authors can choose to get paid on a time basis or per creation (e.g. every video released). This is not necessarily a malicious choice: for long-term projects monthly payment makes more sense. Define "unknowing victims". If someone opens an account there and starts giving money to someone they don't trust, that's completely on them. Just like any other forms of crowdfunding there's a risk involved. If you don't want to risk then don't do that.

Why? it's his choice to do things this way, just as you have the choice to support his project or not. He would probably get more cash if he put more things behind pay tiers, but it seems things are going well enough that he doesn't need to. Plus as far as I know since develpment started he has been putting out bi-weekly updates just as promised.

I don't see what about it is BS. I think patreon has a much better reputation because most game devs on it put out free builds, making donation more about voluntary support than a more risky way to pre-order.

1. D:OS was released basically 14 months after kickstarter campaign. It had 19,541 backers. At $1/month for 14 months that only equals about $270,000. The actual campaign came in at just under $1,000,000.

2. $1500/month is not a decent wage for one person in the US, let alone to split between people.

3. Patreon is not tied to a project, but to the artist/creator. It is clearly not a way to get special access, but a way to support the person themself, so that they can afford to work on what they want to.