Patreon changes (Patreon)

After a lot of thought, I've decided to make the following changes to the patreon:

-Removing tier 1, effectively making current tier 2 the base tier

The most I'll say about my financial situation is that I'm barely getting by, and that obviously factored into making this decision to some extent. But what I feel to be more relevant is the amount of time and work that I put into this stuff. Assigning some sort of value to what I make is always going to feel super weird, and to this day I'm still surprised (and grateful) that anyone thinks what I make is worth their money at all.

But regardless of how I feel, I've come to the realization that I have to be realistic with how I value my time and effort. I know my stuff leaves a lot to be desired, especially when it comes to my art... but I'm trying! I try to think about how to make things bigger and better for you guys with every release, and putting that into practice takes a lot out of me. Drawing, writing, programming and audio work takes its toll, and it's hard not to feel exhausted by the time I manage to put something out.

Nevertheless, I intend to keep the bi-weekly schedule going. To put it shortly, I've reached a point where I feel like a single dollar no longer represents the (mostly) consistent amount of effort I'm putting into this stuff. That is of course entirely subjective, and I'm sure some of you disagree. To those who feel that the increase in price isn't worth it, thank you for your support up until now. For those of you who'll still be with me... thank you! I hope I can keep making stuff up to your standards.

Tier 1 will remain for a while so people can get a chance to read this post, but it will not give access to any other posts. After that I will decide on whether to remove it entirely, or to keep it around in case there are people who just want to give a single dollar without caring about any benefits.

-Removing the discord

I first created the discord in order to facilitate taking commissions, as I felt the patreon dm system wasn't up to the task. I later found it useful to host videos when I started making those, as patreon, for some god-forsaken reason, does not offer any kind of video hosting.

Now that I plan to exclusively work on interactive game content, meaning people using the discord have to go to an external site either way, the discord itself feels kind of redundant. 

And, well... I've realized I never really wanted a discord server to begin with. I've always assumed people found it pretty confusing to see that the patreon offered discord rewards, only to find that I never really allowed people to do the one thing discord servers tend to be used for (talking), except for some rare occasions.

Managing and moderating a community isn't something I can ever see myself wanting to do or even being comfortable with, and as a result the discord server is kind of just this weird second patreon feed where I just barely let people express themselves with emotes. I've kind of just regretted ever creating the server to begin with and have begrudgingly kept it updated this whole time because I didn't want to upset however many people were using it to read updates... but now that its primary purpose (videos) is obsolete, I guess now is the best time to just pull the plug. Sorry to those who were using it regularly.

Submissions and voting will take place on patreon instead. I was worried about cluttering the patreon feed too much with that stuff, but now that it's only once every two weeks, I guess it's not really much of a problem.

These changes will take effect when the next scene is posted. We've put a lot of love into it, so for this one in particular, I can confidently say that the increase in price is warranted. I am holding off on giving a specific date, as it is quite a bit lengthier than any of the other scenes, but it will release at some point during the next few days.

Thank you for all of your support up until now