How we monetize this thing

At the game design course I attended, the teacher was a very avid supporter of free to play games. He said that releasing a game (on the mobile market) was a financial suicide these days. And he might be right.
The Great Voyage will not be released on mobile, however it is very hard to stand out with no marketing budget. Even if we put the price very low, the chances are the VN will be lost to the masses of indie games coming out every day.

They say making your game free will 1000x your audience. We discussed this with the author and decided in the end that knowing more people were reading the VN was more important to us than getting 50€ for our hard work. Instead we decided to put a voluntary donation page inside the game (Nothing predatory, just an option in the menu) for people who want to support the creators with a coin or two. The page has a link to a PayPal page and a bitcoin QR code. Patreon has been so successful lately that I believe in people’s will to earnestly support creators they like.

This also erases other issues we have. By monetizing this way, we don’t have to go through all the bureaucracy associated with selling the game. We don’t have to take our money through a company and other stuff like that.