Hello everyone. I think it's important to address Patreon's recent announcement that it will be changing its fee structure on the 18th of December. For those as yet unfamiliar with the upcoming plans, please check out the official announcement here.
Patreon's justification for adopting this new fee structure is to take the pressure off creators having to handle processing fees. Currently, what happens is people pledge a certain amount each month, but I don't get all of that; a certain proportion of it gets eaten by Patreon for their fees. It's simple, it's easy to understand and it means you only pay what you pledged.
The new approach will see Patrons paying more and Patreon making more money, but not a lot of real benefit to creators. There's a good Twitter thread by someone who actually understands economics here, so give it a read if you want to see how this affects everyone. I predict this has the potential to hurt small creators like me in particular, since I'm certainly not in favour of you having to pay more than I've asked for in my pledge tiers, and can't really afford Patrons to jump ship in protest.
A couple of other creators, including Space Quest Historian and Kris "Pixelmusement" Asick have decided, if Patreon goes ahead with its new fee plan, to adjust their reward tiers so Patrons don't end up paying any more. This means, in my case, that $1 pledges will "reduce" to $0.63 (but you'll still pay $1 with the new fees) and $5 pledges will "reduce" to $4.51 (but again, you'll still pay $5). This seems like a fair approach, so I will be following suit if these plans go ahead; that way, none of you will have to actually pay any more than you are now.
While there are no other real equivalents to Patreon out there — Kickstarter's upcoming Drip is looking like a convincing competitor, but hasn't launched yet — there's no sense jumping ship at the moment, not while I have a pleasingly solid base of regular (and in some cases longstanding!) Patrons.
Rest assured we as creators on Patreon are making our discontent with this matter known, and we'll do our best to ensure that you, as our generous Patrons, continue to be treated fairly. It sucks that this even has to be an issue at all, but, well, this is how things seem to go with businesses like this.
In the meantime, thank you to those of you who continue to support MoeGamer and my work, whether it's financially here on Patreon or simply through likes, shares, comments and suchlike on social media platforms and the site itself. We'll weather this storm together!
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