A little talk about donation, and why I'm no longer getting those

Hey guys, I'm making this post to talk about donation and stuff, and no, this post isn't to beg or anything, It's just to explain things related to it, so read It if you want.

Well, I like programming cool stuffs in game, mostly, I feel joy just by seeing people having fun with what I made, that is kind of like an aval saying that I should go on on the project. N Terraria for example, It nearly reached season 7 just because of how much people liked it, they even made videos showcasing it. But where enters the donation part of the topic? I'll tell you.

As much as I like when people plays an enjoys what I create, the donations were a kind of extra I gained for what I've done, for example: I've only were able to buy something for myself after I've been able to make use of the money I've got from advertisement links that redirects to download links.

I used Adfly to earn a little extra from the downloads of my mods, without counting that also helped me track how many people tried to download the mods (helped track popularity), beside that also gave people an way of donating without spenting a cent, the only thing spent was bandwidth and a little time. Well... Kind of...

I never trusted Adfly's way of handling ads, I always feared that they could have malicious content and cause troubles to ones accessing the download links, even an old team member of the mod has also said the same thing. One thing that also helped that decision, is the fact that the new links the site generates, aren't from Adfly, so what kind of site It can send people to, when they click the link? Neither I wanted to find out. So I've removed all links from Adfly from my mods and projects download link.

So, what now? I've got no way of gaining donation. I've been thinking a lot about it, even thought about Patreon, but there is something that bugs me about it.

Patreon seems to ease the donation for individuals, but I don't want to give the impression that I will stop doing what I do, just because I'm not receiving the royalties for it. Neither want to give the impression that If you don't donate x per month, I wont do something. Not even give some exclusivity to paying players. If there would be a reward given to the people donating, maybe could be keys for my future games, or something else.

The donation surelly helps the developer (me), but I don't want to be forced to do what I do, neither have to implement contents for specific people just because of it. At least that is what is holding me from opening a Patreon.

So, in the end, I'm still doing my things for free. It helps rising my abilities in programming, and also increment the game, and I'm not receiving a cent from what I do. And the biggest reward, is seeing people having fun with it. But It surely was good to be able to buy things...

Well, that is it for this talk.