Upcoming tier changes (not this month!) (Pixiv Fanbox)

Hi Everybody!

So I mentioned a bit back I would be looking at tiers and such and wanted to make a post about it - I like to keep people in the loop and explain my thinking rather than just make arbitrary changes.

First up, nothing is changing this month, and probably not next month. I don't want to make changes this close to the end of a month and want to give people plenty of time to absorb it.

Summary

So if you just want to know what I am planning here is a shorthand version:

$2 - Becomes for just monthly releases. It will get access to the most recent, or if there are multiple videos that months, releases. Access to releases 4 days after $5

$5 - Goes back 2 years. I added it up and it works out to something along the lines of 3+ hours of video, significantly more than was available back when I first introduced the tier. Access to the website, but it will be swapped to lag 1 or 2 releases behind fanbox/substar. Access to releases 4 days after $10. Access to VN games when they are at milestones, so this would be pretty infrequent (mostly because I just don't spend much time on then)

$10 - Pretty much unchanged. Archive access to the cloud drive. Access to stable VN test builds when they are ready.

$15 - Vote in Character polls, and get animations 2 days before the general $10 release. Early tester access to VN builds

$45 super fan - just going to add it to substar, it already exists on fanbox, it is just for people who wanted to tip basically (and fanbox doesn't have that option) - but figure I might as well make sure they are the same. It doesn't offer anything extra except a big thank you (which cannot be redeemed for actual money)

My Thinking

So it has been a fair while since I adjusted or looked at what the different tiers do/provide, the last time was when I got rid of the $1 tier (because it was just not viable to make 30c on the dollar). I did that probably 6 months or so into the creation of Substar, and Fanbox never had a dollar tier - so it was done a long time ago. In addition at that time, there was no real plan or intent for this to be something I did as a job, it was purely a hobby, so having an actual structure to the tiers wasn't really high on my list of things to do. But as something I have been lucky enough to do full-time for two years now, I need to be at least somewhat structured in my tiers, preferably by setting them up in a way that they don't need to be revisited repeatedly.

I want to try and make sure that each tier has a defined space, but at the same time, I need to be relatively realistic in what the different tiers offer/provide. Currently, the $5 tier especially has no real identity and is pretty pointless.

Similarly, the $15 tier was meant to be just a chance to vote, but there are more people in that tier than get votes, suggesting people are there as a support tier, so I feel like they need a bit of extra as a thank you. At the same time, the new releases folder doesn't (to me at least) do much. I will probably keep it as a repository for newer anims, it will probably lose its unique access.

No doubt the biggest difference will be the $2 tier change. At the end of the day, as I create more and more content, the value proposition for that tier just goes up and up. Since its creation, there is roughly 4 times the amount of content (and 5+ hours of video) that would have been available then, and it is simply not a great deal for me to offer that much content for so little, especially when fanbox/substar take their cut (they take 30c + 3%, so the for low tier values, I lose proportionally more of that sub - a $10 sub I pay 60c, for a $2 sub I pay 36c, a $2 sub is 1/5 the sub value, but over half the fee). This is also part of the reason for adding some level of time period to the $5 tier.

At the same time, I don't want to dick my current $2 tier people, so my thought process is that at the moment, if you are a $2 tier, you already have access to the current content and can grab what you want of that over the next month or so, then when the change comes just keep up month to month and it doesn't effect what you have had available.

VN Stuff

The VN stuff is an odd one. It takes a lot of time to make them (and I just don't have heaps of time free), and get kind of get done in parts. People seem a bit split on them - some want more, and some don't care about them. Also, I am often not sure how much of one needs to be done to consider having enough content to release, so I am more inclined to provide them as a "bonus" for upper tiers, and release them to lower tiers when I am confident there is enough there, and it is polished enough, to be worthwhile - it's not like they will be super common anyway.

So going forward that is my intention. As always I appreciate that some people will be angry about the change, and may choose not to sub because of it. I have no hard feelings there and appreciate that this is a luxury for most. If you don't think it's worth it, then I appreciate any and all patronage you have provided. I am happy to hear people's opinions, there may well be things I haven't considered. As I mentioned above, I do not think this will happen until a month plus change from now - i.e it won't apply to this month, nor the next month's, animations.

So that's where I stand at the moment, like I say nothing is changing. This month's animation(s) will be as usual (Clem should be done in a few days), and so should next month's.

Thanks for reading,

KDE