How to make money from your adult game

The short version

Most adult indie games earn money in two ways. A free public build brings players in. Then a paid layer turns some of those players into supporters: a Patreon or SubscribeStar membership for early builds, or a paid full version on Steam, itch.io or DLsite. The free build does the marketing and the paid layer pays the bills.

Every platform below has its own fees and its own adult-content rules, and those rules changed a lot in 2025 and 2026. The numbers here were checked on 26 September 2026. Read the linked policy pages before you build a business on any of them. For the content rules platform by platform, see payment processors and adult games.

The model that works: free build, paid support

A common setup looks like this:

1. A free public build that anyone can play, ideally in the browser so there is nothing to download.
2. A membership page where supporters get the newest build first, plus extras like polls, art or bonus scenes.
3. Links to that page inside the game and on every page where the game appears.
4. Later, a paid full version on a store once the game is finished.

The free build matters most. A player who has already sunk an hour into your characters is far more likely to pay than someone reading a store page. A browser build removes the biggest drop-off point, which is the download.

Patreon

Patreon allows sexually explicit fictional work, including games, on pages marked Adult/18+. The rules that matter for an adult game dev:

• Fees. Pages published after 4 August 2025 pay a standard 10% platform fee. Card payments in USD add 2.9% + $0.30 processing, and a 2.5% fee applies when a patron pays in a different currency from your payout currency.
• Verification. Adult/18+ creators must pass ID and age verification before using Patreon's features.
• Public material stays clean. Your profile image, banner, tier descriptions and free posts must have no nudity. Shop previews count as public too, even when the product is paywalled.
• No Patreon Video. Adult/18+ creators cannot use Patreon's own video hosting. Link to an outside host instead.
• Banned themes. Sexualized incest is banned in all works, and so is "consensual non-consent". Animated adult characters must be clearly adult.
• Payouts. PayPal has a $10 minimum. Non-US creators can also use Payoneer ($25 minimum) or a bank transfer, and US creators can use direct deposit.

SubscribeStar

SubscribeStar runs a separate adult site at subscribestar.adult. When we checked, it carried the name SubscribeStar.art.

• Fees. The adult site's pricing page lists a 10% platform service fee. Payment processing runs from 3% + $0.30 to 10% + $0.40, and you choose whether you or your subscribers pay it. The homepage fee calculator showed 8.0% + $0.40 when we checked. There is also a 10% rolling reserve.
• Payouts. You need at least USD 150 on balance, or USD 30 for some US creators. For requests under USD 5,000, the payout starts within 10 business days of approval.
• Content. The adult site now says it supports fictional and digitally created content only. All content is pre-screened. Since 11 March 2026 its prohibited content page has banned incest, non-consent and underage-looking characters, even when the work is fictional.

Ko-fi

Ko-fi is not a home for an explicit game. Its NSFW tag does not cover pornography or sexually explicit nudity, whether the content is real or fictional, and its NSFW article names the "development or streaming of pornographic/explicit erotic/sex simulator games" as not allowed. Ko-fi also says it may act on explicit content you link to from your page. If your game is explicit, treat Ko-fi as off the table. If it is suggestive but not explicit, the rules are in Ko-fi's NSFW tag article. On the free plan, one-time tips carry no Ko-fi fee, and other payments carry 5%.

Selling the full game

Steam

Steam charges a $100 app fee per product and makes you wait 21 days between paying it and releasing. If you tick "Adult Only Sexual Content" in the content survey, Steam reviews your store page and your build together, and the review can take longer than the usual 3 to 5 business days. Since July 2025 Steam's rules also ban "certain kinds of adult only content" that its payment processors object to. Valve delisted a batch of adult games that month. Steam will not ship games with live-generated AI adult sexual content "at this time". Valve pays monthly once you pass a $100 threshold.

itch.io

itch.io lets you set your own revenue share, with 10% as the default. After the July 2025 crackdown, itch.io put free adult games back in search first and said paid adult content would return "slowly" as it worked with new payment processors. It has posted no official update since. Still, on 26 September 2026 its paid NSFW browse page listed 709 paid games, some of them sexual, so some paid adult pages are selling again. Before you set a price, read itch.io's list of themes it cannot support for sale and check which payment methods your page can offer. If you sell through itch.io payouts, the minimum payout is $5.

In June 2026 itch.io rebuilt its Patreon integration. It can now give patrons access to your itch.io downloads automatically, by paid membership or by specific tier. That is a handy way to deliver patron builds.

DLsite

DLsite, the big Japanese store for doujin and adult games, takes creators from outside Japan. You set the price in steps of 100 yen, and your share rises with the price. DLsite's own example: a work priced at 1,000 yen pays the creator 600 yen plus tax. At 4,400 yen and up, the creator gets 77.6% to 80% of the price, depending on Japanese invoice registration. Non-residents are paid by SWIFT bank transfer, and anything under 30,000 yen rolls over to the next month. DLsite deducts Japanese withholding tax before paying non-residents, so ask a tax adviser how that works where you live.

One catch: Visa, Mastercard and American Express payments have been suspended on DLsite since April 2024. JCB is the only card brand the site supports, so fewer Western buyers can pay easily.

Nutaku

Nutaku Publishing works more like a publisher than a store. It offers funding, marketing, distribution and development support, including live ops, and it has free-to-play producers. You pitch through its contact page. Its terms are not published, so expect a negotiation.

What actually brings in pledges

Nobody publishes clean data on adult games. What we do know:

• Promotion. In Patreon's 2022 census of more than 13,000 earning creators, those who promoted their page daily reported earning 75% more than those who promoted monthly. Weekly promoters reported 31% more. That is self-reported and shows correlation, not cause, but it points the same way as most dev experience.
• A steady update rhythm. Choose a release schedule you can actually keep, monthly for example, and stick to it. Patrons pay every month, so give them something new every month.
• A public build that lags behind. Patrons get the newest build first and the public build follows later. The free build keeps attracting new players and the paid build gives them a reason to join.
• Clear links. Put your support link in the main menu, at the end of each chapter and on your game pages. A player who has just finished a scene they liked is your best moment to ask.

Where naughty.games fits

naughty.games is a free, non-exclusive home for the free browser build. There is no revenue share. You keep 100% of what your own links earn, whether that is Patreon, SubscribeStar, Ko-fi, Steam or itch.io. Third-party ads inside builds are not allowed. Games get promoted by hand based on average time played, D1 retention and conversion, meaning players who play for more than 1 minute. If your game is made in Ren'Py, start with the Ren'Py web export guide. You can publish your game here, and the where to publish guide compares the other options.

Check before you rely on it

Fees, payout minimums and adult rules on these platforms change often, sometimes within days. Everything above was checked on 26 September 2026 against each platform's own pages, which are listed in the sources. Read the current version before you launch a page or price a game.