Back... (Patreon)

So, something positive on April Fool's Day, who'd have thought... This is going to be a relatively long post, so bear with me.

Patreon suspended my page on March 11 and from that point on a tedious "dialogue" between the Trust & Safety Team and me ensued. According to them my page violated their content guidelines and linked to two posts containing references to my first game to use as a starting point to review and get my page withing guidelines again.

As far as I was aware the content in those posts was withing guidelines. So I made a few changes and asked the T&S Team to clarify if they meant removing the entire game from their platform, or just change the wording in those posts. I got a message full of boilerplate back and no answers to my questions. So I made some further changes, acting mostly in the dark, and asked for another review.

It then took them almost two weeks to respond with another message full of boilerplate. The gist of it was that there was "some content still outside their guidelines" and that the original rep handling my case went on holiday...

By that point I made the decision to remove my first game entirely from here, as I didn't want to wait another two weeks for more vague replies and people going on holidays. So I went through eight years of content and removed any references to the first game (something I wouldn't call "some content", to be honest) and asked for another review. Five days later (today) another boilerplate message arrived, together with the announcement that my page was again within guidelines.

I'm of course fucking elated that I have my page back, but the whole process has left a very bad aftertaste. I understand the reasons why Patreon has to do these reviews, but the way they're currently conducted is just terrible. Their emails are full of "if you need any help or have any questions, just ask and we'll happily provide the answers". My experience is that any questions or requests for help are met with regurgitated standard responses.

It's safe to say that dealing with all this for the past few weeks has put a severe damper on my creative output. For the past few weeks there has been news about other platforms giving in to the pressure of credit card companies, causing Gumroad to drop support for 18+ content, Pivix Fanbox no longer offering PayPal and DLsite is also feeling the heat. The income from Patreon has steadily supported the development of my two games, but having it all yanked away has made me seriously rethink my presence here and on other platforms.

In the time it took Patreon not to respond to me, I've rebuilt my personal website and implemented a subscription solution. I'm currently finalizing a deal with a payment processor and will then hopefully launch this platform as an alternative to Patreon and the other subscription platforms out there. The payment processor is a proven solution for many websites that offer adult content and seems like a more stable solution than relying on the whims of corporate overlords.

The platform needs to be tested first and I'm hoping to also include the ability to pay for a subscription with crypto. As soon as I have more news on the launch, I'll let you all know. Of course I'd be happy if you all jumped ship with me, but if you want to stay here on Patreon that's fine too, I just don't know how long it will all last...

TLDR: Patreon suspended my page and handling the appeal and review took Patreon more than three weeks. My first game is now removed from Patreon and I'm back in business, but seriously reconsidering my options and trying to set up a standalone subscription platform through my own website.