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So, as of writing this, Patreon seems intent on changing their pricing structures a bit. I am not amused. As you may have heard, they are sending a flat 95% of pledges to me, which sounds good, until you get to the part where they are passing the fees to you guys, which is awful. It's a minimum 35 cents charge, plus 8%, which isn't that huge a difference in the higher pledge amounts, but hits the $1 pledges hard. I hate to say, but it means that $1 pledges will end up costing you around $1.40 now, while I will still be getting around $1. That sucks for both of us, but especially to you guys.  

I don't know what my options here are. There's really nothing I can do to stop them, I've already expressed my disapproval to Patreon, for what it's worth (which is likely very little), but this change is entirely outside my control.

So, what can I do here? There aren't really any similar services to Patreon which would be as convenient for managing what I do. Patreon is one of the few services that are willing to support games like this one with safe and reasonable payment processes. I can't imagine any other service I move to attracting anywhere near as many patrons (although suggestions are certainly welcome).

The best option I have here is to give you guys better reasons to support me at a $3+ level, which seems to be something of a break-even point. So what do you guys suggest? What more could I be offering that would justify more of you shifting into a higher pay bracket? I totally appreciate the many $1 subscribers I have, ideally everyone sticks around, but I know that this change will lead to some patrons just not being able to take even the 40 cents price increase. I don't want to ask anyone to pay more for the same thing they get today, so the question becomes, what can I do to make it worth that bit extra, so that you feel your money is well spent?

I don't know guys, this sucks.

Comments

Archer

As a one dollar pledge, I would be happy to pay more once a year (to you). I think you can do a one time charge on release posts (divided by the average number or releases per year, three or four for $5.00 each). Which would make it more, but better for all of us.

Jborg007

From what I've heard from my other Patreons, over 90% of the creators are against this change, and some are looking into other alternatives, I can afford the extra costs, that's not the problem, however I do dislike the idea of having to pay each creator individually instead of having it bundled up into one payment, I find it's easier to keep track if it's in one transaction rather than several smaller ones.

OniArtist

I'm happy to accept whatever pledge you care to offer, but honestly, as a big picture solution to this problem I'm really not a fan. The issue there is that it would make my finances REALLY hard to manage. I mean, if say half my patrons decide to do that, and many of them decide to do it on the same month, then suddenly I'd be making like $12K that month, that's nice, but then $2K every other month of the year or something, my monthly rates would swing wildly based on when people decided to give their annual donation. I mean, money's money and all, hooray, but it's certainly nicer when I have a relatively consistent monthly income that only rises and lowers a little bit. So, I mean, you do what works for you, certainly, but I'd like to figure out a way that can retain that month-to-month stability. And thanks again for your support.

OniArtist

Most creators do seem opposed, but at the same time, I've read some pieces that indicate that BIG creators, the ones that are already famous and get plenty of $20+ subscriptions, are largely fine with this, and Patreon seems to care more about them. That seems to be what they meant when they said they "tested it out and it mostly worked out fine," well yeah, on those types of Creators it might, so "on average" it balances out because those guys bring in tens of thousands a month, but only by kicking *most* of their Creators in the stones. I do think that the solution here will likely come in the form of some sort of "wallet" system, where you guys (and I guess me too since I patronize people too) would make a one time monthly+ transaction with fees into a single account, and then that money is dispersed without fees to every Creator you want, but from what I hear they are resistant to do this "for reasons."

Sazriel

I currently support a few Patreon creators. And while the new fees do add more cost to the supporter, I'm in a position right now where I wouldn't be able to keep supporting each of them I do if I needed to move all my $1 pledges to $3. At a $1.50 a pledge it's still more affordable for me on a monthly basis. I'm also in a position where it would be hard to do lump sums. I personally think I'm getting a ton from a $1 level pledge and really appreciate it. So I don't know if you can have multiple payment options that will allow those in my position to stay where I'm at, with the additional fees of course, and allow you to setup other more cost effective options. But it would be helpful to me at least if that is the case. But either way, you're one of my favorite Patreons so I'll be here still. I just don't want this to stress you out more than it already has. I appreciate all you do and the fact you keep pumping out content. So whatever you think is best for every one is good enough for me.

OniArtist

Well, to be clear, I am NOT planning on offering any less to my $1 patrons than I do now, I am NOT going to raise the minimum level or anything. I just wanted to see if there were some small things I could be doing to make a $3 level more worthwhile to those who could fit that into their budgets. And keep in mind, I am not directly being hurt by these changes, the amount I get from your "$1" pledge will actually be slightly higher than it is today, so I'm fine on that score, no need to worry about me there. Where I get hit by this is in patrons who decide to not support me at $1.40, which is the new actual price, so they quit entirely, and I imagine in total that will hit me a lot. But anyone who wants to keep pledging $1, please do, and expect to receive just as much from me as ever.

Laughaddict

I could give extra have you considered, adding an extra hand to help with some of the coding or art? It would help get builds out faster. Not sure if that makes me sounds selfish or not.

Chris

I cancelled most of my 1 dollar pledges to other people. I had many i only did it to help out a little while having little interest in the project. You are one of the few i still have.

Tassadar Talimar

I can't speak for anyone else of course but this change by Patreon isn't going to have an impact on my pledge. The extra few cents that are going to Patreon is a bit annoying, but to me that's all it is, a slight annoyance. Hopefully this won't have a negative effect on your supporters. Thank you for your concern towards us and thanks even more for the literal hours of amazing gameplay!

OniArtist

I already have a few people helping with art, and someone writing scenarios. He's only just learning the basic coding needed to make the scenarios function, but he's really a quick learner on that. The new content is coming out at a faster pace than before, and I really do expect Emma to be finished in a much shorter time table than Kitty (more on that later this month), but there are certain bottlenecks to production, like I need to get basic artwork done for a lot of things before I can hand it off to other artists to finish, otherwise the art would look too inconsistent. Likewise with the writing, The Rook's turning in a lot of great stuff, and his increasing use of coding is making that an even more fluid process (at first it was basically just movie-script style and I had to code the actual details), but even so, I want to set the tone for the characters myself, and I also need to add new coding systems. I don't want to turn too much of the coding over to others just because I'm an amateur myself, I have my own (sloppy and non-standard) way of doing things, and I want to be able to understand everything that happens in the game as best I can. And ask for what you want to ask for, there are no bad requests, I'll deliver what I can, and explain what I can't.

OniArtist

Aw, that means a lot, thank you. I hope to continue to live up to that faith.

OniArtist

Thanks, that's very appreciated. I hope to provide hours more over the coming year.

Lee Thompson

I'm one of the $1 pledgers and.. this change doesn't bug me at all. I *prefer* the full pledge going to the creator and me eating the fee. It means that the support I'm intending to go to that creator goes to the creator. (Sadly transaction fees are out of Patreon's control except for who gets to pay it, all payment processing services charge them.)

OniArtist

Yeah, and I get the "necessity" of transaction fees, I just wish they could figure out a way to not apply the 40-cent minimum to small donations. I do hope they can figure out a "wallet" system so that if you want to give $1 to 20 Creators, you could be charged $20+0.35+0.16 once per month, and then that $20 gets split among all your creators whenever it's their turn.

Anonymous

I also am a 1$ supporter and will say that it isn't a problem for me, its annoying and irritating, but not a problem (as long as it doesn't "change" again). As long as creators are getting the amount they posted I don't mind for now, but it does seem to be aimed at them making more money off smaller pledges which are the primary pledge levels.

Anonymous

Oh yes. Gotta love paying $1.60 for every $0.95 cent you actually get.

OniArtist

Well, it's not quite that, because Patreon is not making more money here. They are making a flat 5% all the time, same as always. The added cost is from the credit card companies that process the transactions, and it's a flat minimum fee which is why it hits small pledges so hard. In the old system they would charge everyone once per month, so that minimum fee would only be applied to the sum total of your pledges to everyone, but now they charge for each Creator separately. That isn't entirely to forgive Patreon in this, but it seems that the reasons are different than just direct "pocketing the money." It has more to do with prioritizing "big" Creators who have mostly $5+ charges for music videos and stuff, and just that they don't seem to *care* as much as us Creators about the $1 Patrons. I hope they can work out a better system that would allow them to avoid charging each fee separately. Thank you for your continued support though.

OniArtist

Yeah, not fun. Now it does scale up better at higher pay levels, a $10 pledge I would get $9.50 of, and you would only be charged $0.45 on top of that $10 pledge, so not a huge problem there, it's just that it really slams the $1 donations that make up a large portion of my (and many others) business.

Todd Whitesel

I would be fine with paying the proposed fee once per month on the whole bill for all my creators at once. But not per-individual-pledge and definitely not scattered all through the month on the "anniversary" of each subscription. I am getting ready to cancel all but a few of my pledges over this. I really hope they change course so I can come back.

Anonymous

I will stay with you my dear Oni

Anonymous

cant get rid of me that easy, ill follow you wherever you go

Scott Snelling

This is just a terrible change by Patreon being greedy. And a huge punishment to those people who like to spread their money around. Instead, it encourages us Patrons to lump our money to a single creator so we don't get hit by 10-20 35 cent charges every month. I enjoy your game, but the reality for me is that I don't want to spend more on a Patreon page then I would on an actual game - and $5 and $10 monthly pledges break that mentality. My plan is to cancel my pledge, and hope that enough other people completely cancel as well so that Patreon is hit where they notice it. Sadly, that means a lot of content creators will likely be seeing their incomes take a marginal hit as well. But if it gets Patreon to stop punishing small pledges, that is the best possible result. I really wish that Patreon would only charge each Patron the .35 charge once per month, regardless of how many projects that they support. If they did that, I wouldn't mind paying the bit extra. Because I'm having to cancel several pledges so that I don't see my monthly donation amount jump by 40%.

Anonymous

Here's the blog post explaining their reasoning behind all this: <a href="https://blog.patreon.com/updating-patreons-fee-structure/">https://blog.patreon.com/updating-patreons-fee-structure/</a>. Basically they are doing away with the cumulative end-of-month charges and bill your credit card when the pledge happens (e.g. if I place a monthly pledge on the 3rd of a month, it'll be billed on the 3rd of each following month). That's a big pile of rubbish, since it generates loads of additional transactions fees someone (us patrons) have to pony up. And all because the cumulative billing is too confusing for a few morons. Sorry for the rant... Anyway, I've cancelled most of my 1$ pledges but I'll keep this one :).

Anonymous

Oh, one more thing: <a href="https://www.change.org/p/patreon-patreon-drop-the-external-service-charge?recruiter=1483923&amp;utm_source=share_petition&amp;utm_medium=copylink&amp;utm_campaign=share_petition&amp;utm_term=203903." rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://www.change.org/p/patreon-patreon-drop-the-external-service-charge?recruiter=1483923&amp;utm_source=share_petition&amp;utm_medium=copylink&amp;utm_campaign=share_petition&amp;utm_term=203903.</a> I don't know if it'll do any good, but we can at least try.

Zakey Ori

I think it sucks that Patreon has to do this but oh well. I would still support you (well you're the only creator I found worthy of support right now haha). But anyway, keep doing your best, Oni ;)

Anonymous

It does kind add up I pledge to about 50-60 different artist at different levels but a lot of them are 1-3$ pledges. I didn't remove any pledges entirely because of the change but I did reduce a few of my higher pledges to compensate.

OniArtist

Well, if I end up being one of those, I understand. I hope they can make it a more functional system before long though.

OniArtist

I understand, and hopefully if some measure of boycott would lead to results, I can weather the impact, but I do hope they figure something better out soon. This really is a tough situation, because if like a game company does something jerky, you boycott that company, and they're the ones that get hit by it. When something like Patreon does something jerky, then by boycotting them it also ends up hurting other "customers" of theirs in the form of the Creators, who have no control over the situation either.

OniArtist

Yeah, it really doesn't work out well for anyone but the credit card companies.

Anonymous

I don't quite get it myself. Is patreon just trying to squeeze a few more pennies out of the patreons, and the artists using it?

Anonymous

if you want to compensate for the increase, maybe include a little extra for the 1 dollar pledges. Like, maybe include an asset pack with each release of Rogue-Like, or a file containing teaser sketches for future content. I know that's probably asking a bit much, considering how much work you put into the game. just a thought

OniArtist

No, or at least I don't believe that's the case. They've explained their reasonings. Basically, any time a credit card gets charged, there is a transaction fee, which has a minimum of 35 cents. Currently, Paypal charges everyone once a month, and that transaction fee is applied to the sum total of all your pledges to all Creators. It's deducted from those Creators' pay, but if most Patrons support several Creators, the amount gets spread so thin it's barely noticeable. The Problem with that is that if people signed up on the 27th of the month, they would get charged for that month, and also for the next month in a few days. So now they are moving to a "rolling subscription" system, in which if you sign up on the 7th, you get charged for that month, and then again on the 7th of next month, and so on and so on, but if you signed up for ten people on different days of the month, you'd get ten individual charges at those different times of the month, instead of all at once. This is the core change they are making, and why. But the result is that now you're not getting charged once, you're getting charged ten times, and those ten charges each have, at minimum, a 35 cent transaction fee to the credit card companies, making a $10 pledge a $11 pledge, but making a $1 pledge a $1.38 pledge, and ten $1 pledges $13.80. Give or take. I get the basic idea here, but they need to figure out some more creative ways to handle this. There have been a few suggestions put out there, we'll have to see if they adopt any of them.

OniArtist

Well, I don't want to have a "two tiered" game, where there are features to the game itself that are somehow restricted to higher spending patrons, I'm not EA here. ;) I have been considering offering some more/better preview material to higher tier patrons though. There's some cool content I've been working on, and I plan to show it off in the coming weeks. I might put out one version for everyone, but another version that's a little more. . . interesting for the higher pricing tiers. It'll all be in the game eventually, but that might be a nice little perk.

Amocide

Heres the problem with the new system tho, a solid 75% of patrons on patreon sub for between $1-$10. Not the higher tiers so their effectively sckrewing over everyone. A friend of mine did some number crunching and before the change the break even point was $5, now with the change the break even point is $35 and thats actually fucking scummy as shit.

Hivedragon

Even if I did $1,- I would continue supporting

srksrksrk

Well I can afford it, but i find it's not OK from Patreon. If you ask me what to do about it, I gess you already do what you can. Add some more clothings to buy in the shop, I would say ;)

Mathieu Duval

I actually dont mind that they added it, what i mind is that we pay it for EACH pledge. Its a good thing that i try to not have too man y pledged games. Still, ill keep going on the 1$ pledge. That way i can support you, get a good game, and not lose too many money if you ever decide to disappear and leave us whit an incomplete game. Look mean, but i got burn too often....

OniArtist

Heh, fair enough, but I don't plan on going anywhere any time soon. Thanks for your support along the way.

Dubsington

I think the change sucks, but I don't think it's going to be that big a deal. Unless a patron has some very large number (maybe 50+ ?) of $1 pledges the surcharge is not likely to be a serious problem. Unfair, yes. Actual major financial problem, no.

OniArtist

Each person has their own story, and multiple pledges do add up. This is almost a 50% increase on $1 pledges, so anyone who has lots of them can see a notable increase. So far lots of creators are reporting massive patron losses.

Anonymous

update much appreciated from your one dollar crew

wiseass

You could try looking into the alternatives if things get really bad.

OniArtist

Any suggestions would be appreciated. I looked around a bit before Patreon was an option, and the scene didn't look good. Most convenient options out there either A. didn't deal in Erotica at all, or B. had somewhat shady and/or inconvenient payment methods. Patreon had its imperfections, even before this, but it was always a very stable and convenient system for what I'm doing.

OniArtist

I just wanted everyone to know what was coming, my stance on it, and brainstorm options of how to proceed. The response has been heart-warming.

srksrksrk

I see a couple of game creators who suggest you also support their artists, text writers, proof readers and so on. I guess the new patreon policy should lead to a more centralized game developing (and funding) process. Meaning, instead of paying five people one dollar each, pay five dollars and let them figure out how to distribute it evenly.

Chadnasty

Maybe start providing nudes of yourself at the 3 dollar level? I'm sure that'll be a nice deal ;)

OniArtist

Maybe. That seems like a silly way to organize things in the first place. I just pay all the people who do work for me out of pocket, it would be weird to try and funnel individual donations to each person.

EpsilonEta

Probably useless to suggest it here but it feels like Patreon could just keep track of what people owe and charge everything once a month. As for your problem. I will still pay as usual but if you want you could change the terms from $1/month to $3 per mayor release and make 1 release every 3ed month. You could still make other releases in between, just not flag them as mayor. It would of course mean you don't get money every month but you could keep the higher pledges per month. Just an idea. Preferable Patreon would just charge all pledges as one.

srksrksrk

I think they pulled back and will not change their charging fees now...

MrSVCD

Correct: <a href="https://blog.patreon.com/not-rolling-out-fees-change/">https://blog.patreon.com/not-rolling-out-fees-change/</a>

Anonymous

Well, I already increased my pledge to $3, and since I can currently afford it, I'm gonna leave it there, heh.

Randy

Any chance of getting Emma before the New Year?

JulienJaden

Am I right to assume that next on the list is finishing up the Kitty content (is there anything left for you to do other than titjobs and dancing?) and getting threesomes implemented? Or do you wanna take a break from those two and get started on a new character (or some content that's not specific to either of them)?

OniArtist

I am determined to get a version with Emma in before New Year, but don't expect a ton right away, it will basically be an intro scene like Kitty's and if I can get it done adding her to some (non-sexual) classroom cameos. Actual sexy times will be added a bit after that. Right now I have most of the sprite art done, and the intro scene mostly written/coded, but still need to export it to playable files, and build the sprite in code.

OniArtist

I've already started on Emma. I still have some work to do with Kitty (and Rogue), but I'll be doing it in parallel with building up Emma.