Goodbye! (Patreon)

Just to make that clear, this is not an early April's Fool post ;)

Some probably already suspected this after I had paused my Patreon for the last two months, I decided to stop my engagement in the VaM community for the foreseeable future.

But, ...why?

I was active in the VaM community more or less continuously for more than 4 years now. VaM has come a long way since then. Usually I spend something around 30-40 hours per month, some months up to 80 when I had some vacation. However, for the last year or so almost half of that time was just spend answering random questions. Quite often people don't even bother to send a "thx", let alone sub to my Patreon, after I spend like 30 or 60 minutes formulating an answer, sometimes even building things like example scenes or making screenshots for them. I tried to answer questions on the Hub, so at least others could profit from the time spent, but that didn't really work. The "best" ones are those who would like that I magically make random thing X work with VaM or with one of my plugins, because it can be done in just 30 minutes or so. "Random thing X" is usually something like some obscure raytracing plugin for Unreal engine or whatever. It just doesn't work like that. Of course, not everyone is like that, but sadly many are.

Then there is real life. As you may know, I work on AAA games in my real job. We are nearing release in a few months, and stress levels are rising as you would expect. To keep my sanity I have to reduce my VaM time. Since the questions will keep coming in if I remain active, it would mean I wouldn't get any VaM work done at all. Even when simply ignoring the more dumb questions. Not to mention that I can't make any plans when I don't know whether I can spend the following weekend on VaM work or have to stay away from the computer to recover from a stressful week in my real job. VaM really has become more work than fun.

What will happen now?

(Edit: Plans changed slightly, site will remain online although there won't be new content. You may want to unsubscribe. Details and reasoning here.)

I will keep this Patreon site paused for one or two more months. This gives those who want to the opportunity to still make new pledges. This is mostly intended for my "Pay if you liked it" content like my video tutorials and the benchmark scene. If you are an existing Patreon, you won't be charged, just like in the last two months. If you really want to, I think you can unsubscribe and re-subscribe to send me money.

Then, eventually, I will unlaunch the page, which is the process Patreon intends for this kind of thing. That will mean the my Patreon page won't be accessible anymore, unless I decide to relaunch as some time in the future. Maybe I will be back for VaM 2.x next year or so, but no promises.

All my content will remain accessible under CC-BY-SA license via the Hub.

// MacGruber