Patreon Pledge Info & Extra Mythology Update (Patreon)

Some of you will have received an update (and the rest of you will soon!) from Patreon telling you that they are changing the way pledges work, in a way that will ultimately make your pledges cost more. I wanted to take a moment to chat with you all about that change, and then to discuss the Extra Mythology milestone at the end since we're talking about pledges already!

Patreon Info Link: https://patreon.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/115005631963#patron

First up: Patreon will ask you to pay more per month starting on December 18. The additional charge has not happened yet! After December 18, you will be asked to pay a service fee of 2.9% + $0.35 USD for every pledge. This applies not just to us, but to every Creator you support on Patreon. If you currently pledge $1.00 USD to us, your new pledge will be $1.38 USD.

Patreon lays out their reasoning for this in the Patreon Info Link above, but to summarize: service fees go to Patreon to keep their service running. They've always been part of Patreon, but previously they took the service fee out of each Creator's account. After December 18, they will be asking Patrons to pay that service fee instead. To phrase that more simply: Extra Credits is currently paying the fee, but after December 18, you will be paying the fee.

If you don't like that change, you are welcome to share your opinions in the comment section! My goal here today is not to tell anyone what they should think (although of course I have my own opinions!). My goal here today is to make sure that you're all informed about this change and have the ability to make whatever decision is best for you.

We have always said at Extra Credits that we want our patrons to pledge only what is comfortable for them. We stand by that. If this change pushes your pledge up to a level that you can no longer afford, we encourage you to lower or drop the pledge, whatever makes most sense to you. Again, you have until December 18 to make changes before this new policy goes into effect! (Although many of you will not actually be charged until January 1, I'd rather you took care of yourselves early.) If you've already paid for December, changing or deleting your pledge should not affect your Patreon rewards for this month - it will only affect them starting in January. If however you do have any trouble, please email me at soraya@extra-credits.net or leave comments here on this post, which is public so anyone can write here regardless of their pledge status.

Again, you can find more details (and hopefully more answers to your questions) here on Patreon's Info Link: https://patreon.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/115005631963#patron

NOW. EXTRA MYTHOLOGY!

Some of you have noticed that our pledge amount dropped below $16k/mo after we achieved the Extra Mythology milestone. To be honest, we expected that: many people lower or drop pledges around this time of year so they can save up for the holidays, and the pledge that pushed us over the milestone was a one-time boost from a generous patron.

But we don't want to leave you in doubt! We WILL do Extra Mythology. Once the milestone is crossed, even for a moment, we consider it achieved. It's still going to be a while before we can create it (I didn't expect the boost, so I didn't organize a production slot in advance the way I usually do). If you can wait, though, it'll happen, and we'll have a 100% confirmation of the topic for you very very soon!

Thanks for putting up with my long post! Hope this help clears a few things up for everyone. And we'll see you this Saturday for the premier of Khosrau Anushirawan!

-Soraya

Updated: When I first wrote this post, I said that service fees covered the cost of business transactions online. I've since learned that this service fee is actually Patreon's direct cut, which they use to pay their staff and run the service in general. I've corrected this post to reflect that.