I must admit, I’m not entirely sure how I feel about Patreon – is it okay for me as a developer to fund a games writer who potentially in the future could write something about my game? I don’t know – you’re certainly not, in that simple act of Patronage, entering into a binding contract where they must write something favourable about you. But at the same time, without intimately knowing the person you’re supporting you also can’t guarantee that it won’t predispose them towards you.
So what to do? Well, here’s a thought…
Set your Patreon account to “private”, you muppet. You can do that dead easily. For extra fun, set up another email account with a meaningless address and don’t put your actual name (or common internet handle) into the Username box (those are the only two mandatory fields). That done, there is no way that the person you’re supporting, or the public at large, could ever know you support them – and therefore there is no way at all that this act of Patronage could be perceived as a cash for coverage situation.
If the person you’re supporting doesn’t know (and can’t know) you support them, how could this possibly change anything? The other way round, press supporting devs… that’s a little different and I bow gracefully out of having an opinion on that matter since it’s not an issue I have to concern myself with, not being press and all 😉