Any relationship between a developer and the press is a shaky one. While it may be a healthy business relationship, there will always be the specter of bias. Does this reviewer actually believe that this game is good, or are they just saying that because the devs are helping keep the lights on? It was co-founder of FDG, a popular mobile games developer, Thomas Kern that summed up this potential conflict of interest best,
LONEWOLF…was recently chosen as ‘Game of the Week’…Unfortunately, since we’ve been a Top Patreon supporter (of TouchArcade), the coverage had to come with a disclaimer…there’s always this stale taste when positive news can only come with a disclaimer. In a subtle way it’s discrediting our work.
A little context on that quote, that was made in a post on TouchArcade’s Forum as part of a larger post explaining why FDG would no longer be supporting them on Patreon. With that context comes some back story.
Last year TouchArcade hit some tough times and they needed money; so they decided to look to popular funding site Patreon. Support flooded in with funds reaching $9,127.55 at its highest point, according to Graphtreon. While not hitting the goal of $10,000 as said in post by Kotaku, that would allow “operating without worrying about needing to do anything crazy to keep the lights on.” the campaign was still successful. Then funds started to dip with the biggest being a $1000 drop from a developer. Which brings us back to the quote.
The loss came at a potentially suspect time. On January 18, TouchArcade reviewed Venture Kid, a game by FDG, giving it a 3.5/5 calling the game essentially, fun but unremarkable. The following day, FDG publicly announced that it would no longer support TouchArcade on Patreon. Kern said that move had nothing to with the review score and had more to do with transparency. Kern then said that this was not how developers and press should act saying,
(TouchArcade’s) Patreon support should solely come from players – readers that are not in the industry. This way the integrity will never be at doubt. In no way. We prefer to be handled like every other developer, without disclaimers below positive articles.
Kern concluded his post urging everyone to support TouchArcade, but that wasn’t the end of it. The post set off a heated discussion amongst the community and some of the editors, including Editor-in-Chief Eli Hodapp who implied that FDG dropped support because of the review.
Although it does seem strange that an average review score for a game that’s just OK was the straw that broke the camel’s back here.
Hodapp claimed that making the public post was a way to “punish us for the Venture Kid review”. To which Kern responded by saying that FDG already received a 3.5 review score while they were supporting TouchArcade.
Everyone seems to have a point in the incident and while it’s hard to say who’s right, it’s clear that there are some inherent problems with developers supporting the press. Kotaku spoke to Hodapp, who talked about their number of supporters, and his concerns about it. He explained that Patreon isn’t the only source of revenue for the site. So it appears that this loss of Patreon funds won’t be the end of TouchArcade.