My letter to Patreon (Patreon)

Not sure if any of you are interested in seeing this or not, but I thought I'd share it anyway.  The link I gave earlier to the Patreon article includes a link to a survey to tell Patreon what you think of the new changes they tried to make and why you did not like them.  I went ahead and filled it out, as well as wrote a letter to them.  I felt that I was speaking on all of our behalf on this:

From where I am sitting, I never had a problem with paying the extra fees.  I see them as a cost of doing business.  Patreon provides a platform for creators like myself to share their work, and you take a small cut and charge necessary fees to ME as a creator to maintain my working environment.  If you have fees that you need to take, talk to us about it and apply it to creators.  We're effectively running a business and if we incur additional costs, those costs should fall on us.  If we feel that we need to compensate those fees by passing part, or all, of those costs on to our customers, then that should ALWAYS be our decision to make.

If you want to create stability for creators, I know that I pay anything from 8-11% in additional fees the last few months.  If you really need to create a specific number for creators, why don't you charge 10%, or even 15% as your fee from creators, then pay for those expenses out of your own cut?  After all, you claim to be here to provide an environment where we can focus on our work without needing to worry about everything else.

In the future, you may consider proposing changes to the community as a whole, explain your idea, or your need for a change, then let the community share their thoughts and ideas related to an issue.  You could avoid much of the blowback from situations like this, and from the recent rules changes for adult content creators,  by letting us take part in the discussion.  Obviously there will be times as a company where you will HAVE to do something, but even in those situations, be honest and up front about it, don't mislead us, and see if maybe someone has ideas that will help take some of the sting from any needed changes rather than forcing those changes down our throat and watching us choke on it.

In the end, you've betrayed our trust, both of the creators who use your platform, and from the people who support us.  Trust is a delicate thing.  It takes time to earn, it can be lost easily, and when its been hurt it can be slow to heal.  You won't win back my trust, or any of my supporter's trust over night.  We're wary, and we're hurt by what you did, and I'm not just talking about all the money I have lost since you made the announcement about your changes, I'm talking about the loss of support from our patrons, the lack of certainty we had in being able to use your service without worry about how you might hurt our business.

I'm not ready to forgive you for all of that yet, I'm upset, and I know a lot of people who support me are as well.  Reversing this bad decision is a good first step, its like finally being able to breathe after spending a week being smothered by uncertainty.  Continue to do the right thing, continue to rebuild our trust, and in time we will all be able to put this unfortunate situation behind us.

~Aftermath Team