Charge Up Front (Patreon)

Hello, all. Patreon has recently enabled a feature called Charge Up Front on my account. After talking with current patrons and developer friends on Discord, I've decided to enable this feature. I'll explain what this means in a bit, but first of all I want everyone to know that current patrons will not be affected by this change.

What Charge Up Front means is that from now on, new patrons will be charged their pledge amount as soon as they pledge. Afterwards, they will be charged on the 1st of each month as usual. This serves to fix a huge issue that I (and every other Patreon creator) have faced since day 1: content theft.

It's unfortunately very common for dishonest patrons to make a pledge, download as much content from paid posts as they want, and then immediately delete their pledge so they're not charged. Others will go so far as to stay pledged all month, downloading content and viewing paid posts, and then drop their pledge on the last day of the month, right before they're charged. Either way, it's an all-too-easy way for someone to steal content from hard-working creators. Charge Up Front fixes this issue by requiring payment before a patron can view any paid posts.

For those of you who are already pledged, thank you. Again, this won't affect you unless you increase your pledge later. If you do so, you'll be charged the difference immediately (for example, if a $5 patron upgrades to a $10 pledge, you'll be charged $5 immediately).

I'm very excited for this change, which will allow me to finally have some real defense against those who exploit Patreon's flaws to steal content.

As always, thanks so much for your ongoing support!