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gnome7 posted:The real issue is the +0.35 charge is on each pledge to each person. So if you pledge $10 to one person, you are charged a total of 10.65. If you pledge $1 to 10 people, you are charged 13.80. Even though Patreon only processes your pledges once either way (in both cases my paypal would read -$10 before this change), they're making that 35 cent charge per pledge anyway.
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Dec 7, 2017 18:40
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Alien Rope Burn posted:Isn't this not the first time for this? As somebody who has some heavy pledges, I remember seeing my rates ramp up awhile back with no mention as to why until I did some digging to find out they were essentially charging supporters a service charge on top of the pledge amounts? they started doing this with new pledges back in the summer, now they're doing it for all pledges
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Dec 7, 2017 19:11
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Leperflesh posted:honestly I don't know how an outfit like Patreon can do microtransactions in the first place, given that most of them are paid for by debit or credit card, and Patreon absolutely has to be paying those transaction fees for processing. The way I heard it, Patreon does all their transactions at once to cut down on the processing fee. Though I never really looked into how Patreon does things.
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Dec 7, 2017 20:28
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NachtSieger posted:The way I heard it, Patreon does all their transactions at once to cut down on the processing fee. Though I never really looked into how Patreon does things. Yes. Though there was a goof with my own transactions last month where they had to charge everything individually because their site is kinda bad.
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Dec 7, 2017 20:34
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Splicer posted:My theiry: they've moved to a blockchain database or etherium smart contract system and each transaction genuinely costs them 35c of electricity to process.
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Dec 7, 2017 21:47
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NachtSieger posted:The way I heard it, Patreon does all their transactions at once to cut down on the processing fee. Though I never really looked into how Patreon does things. That makes this make even less sense and looks like a blatant cash grab from them. If they only charge my card once for the $10, they're not losing an appreciable amount of money paying off the 10 people I pledged a dollar too because they're also only getting a single lump sum, so it's a total of two transactions. This per pledge bullshit just lines their pockets.
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Dec 7, 2017 21:55
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Kwyndig posted:That makes this make even less sense and looks like a blatant cash grab from them. If they only charge my card once for the $10, they're not losing an appreciable amount of money paying off the 10 people I pledged a dollar too because they're also only getting a single lump sum, so it's a total of two transactions. This per pledge bullshit just lines their pockets.
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Dec 7, 2017 22:01
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The theory over on Twitter is that this is an attempt by Patreon to increase their cash flow following some sort of stock option thing last year (?) that massively overvalued them. I got lucky since there was a $5 pledge on my list that I don't feel too guilty about cancelling, and cutting that will let me keep paying a selection of other people their $1 a month.
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Dec 7, 2017 22:53
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At least Steam can rip off the hell out of game devs because they have an overwhelming monopoly built over a decade but these guys don't have that
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Dec 7, 2017 23:00
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Hell, it would have been less predatory if they'd just copied Twitch's bit model: let patrons buy all their patreonbux in one lump, and then distribute those patreonbux to artists however.
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Dec 8, 2017 00:04
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Yeah, I'm just glad the really expensive commission I was having done this month through Patreon is going to be handled off-site because of circumstances... but it's going to make things complicated otherwise. I had a error on their site recently that wiped all my pledges, and it means I can't just be lazy, and I have to reconsider how much I'm pledging to who outside of my big art pledges.
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Dec 8, 2017 01:05
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I don't understand their thing. I'm pledged at the basic level to EN world, and get billed at the end of the months. Will I now be paying ~ 1.35 per thingie, or will it for example, $5.35 at the end of the month?
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Dec 8, 2017 01:13
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Angrymog posted:I don't understand their thing. I'm pledged at the basic level to EN world, and get billed at the end of the months. Will I now be paying ~ 1.35 per thingie, or will it for example, $5.35 at the end of the month? Basically you pay about 3% (plus about 30 cents) on every individual pledge, not the total amount. So low pledges get kicked in the teeth because while 3% of a dollar isn't much, 30 cents is. Higher pledge amounts will have a lower proportion but a higher amount. Here's a tweet illustrating: https://twitter.com/CaraidArt/status/938574131976638464
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Dec 8, 2017 01:46
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Fuego Fish posted:Basically you pay about 3% (plus about 30 cents) on every individual pledge, not the total amount. So low pledges get kicked in the teeth because while 3% of a dollar isn't much, 30 cents is. Higher pledge amounts will have a lower proportion but a higher amount. Here's a tweet illustrating:
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Dec 8, 2017 03:27
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Splicer posted:What's the opposite of progressive taxation? Regressive taxation, predictably enough (she says, pedantically)
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Dec 8, 2017 03:46
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Fuego Fish posted:Basically you pay about 3% (plus about 30 cents) on every individual pledge, not the total amount. So low pledges get kicked in the teeth because while 3% of a dollar isn't much, 30 cents is. Higher pledge amounts will have a lower proportion but a higher amount. Here's a tweet illustrating: A whole lot of podcasts just went up in flames. That $1 level is very popular.
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Dec 8, 2017 04:04
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Evil Hat just posted this. Bolding mine: quote:You may have heard today that Patreon has rapidly rolled out a new billing model for patrons without consulting the creators, handily pissing off both parties. We join with the other creators in expressing our disappointment with Patreon for making this move. While it was nominally presented as a means to ensure greater, more reliable revenue goes to the creators, the reality of it is much more likely to have a chilling effect on patrons' willingness to spread the love around or really even pledge in the first place. Fred's been very up-front about the fact that Patreon is pretty much the only way they could have done the Worlds of Adventure line, and even they they're not pulling in a huge profit. This makes sense, but it still sucks that content providers will either lose backers or have to jump through these kinds of hoops to keep everything going.
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Dec 8, 2017 04:10
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would sending people money via PayPal be in any way an improvement?
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Dec 8, 2017 05:23
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That would require dealing with all of PayPal's poo poo, so probably not outside of maybe one time donations.
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Dec 8, 2017 05:30
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Smart write up and decision by Evil Hat. Shame, I really like the Worlds' line. For my part I've already had to cut some $1 monthly Patreons. I hope there is enough backlash that they go back to the original system. I wonder how Toady1 and Dwarf Fortress will be affected.
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Dec 8, 2017 05:42
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gradenko_2000 posted:would sending people money via PayPal be in any way an improvement? A friend who runs a Patreon has looked into it after a patron asked, and basically once you're getting a regular monthly payment Paypal starts treating you as a storefront and it's a whole lotta extra bullshit to deal with.
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Dec 8, 2017 05:59
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Isn't Kickstarter doing some sort of pledge-per-month thing now?
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Dec 8, 2017 06:01
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unseenlibrarian posted:A friend who runs a Patreon has looked into it after a patron asked, and basically once you're getting a regular monthly payment Paypal starts treating you as a storefront and it's a whole lotta extra bullshit to deal with. Also PayPal is known for freezing accounts the moment anything "suspicious" happens and refusing to unfreeze them without about 10 different legal documents. Evil Mastermind posted:Isn't Kickstarter doing some sort of pledge-per-month thing now? Yup. D Rip.
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Dec 8, 2017 06:04
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This also really double-fucks prolific creators who draw pledges per project completed instead of per month. If you support someone for $1 per project completed and they regularly put out weekly content, you're going from $4 per month to $5.51. That's super unappealing for customers to see, especially when it's explicitly a processing fee. That's a goddamn +37% processing fee even though, as has been said but I think cannot be stressed enough, you only get charged the once at the end of the month. That's loving ludicrous.
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Dec 8, 2017 07:29
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Evil Hat should set up a competing platform. They could call it Fatereon 
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Dec 8, 2017 07:34
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In less jackboots-of-capitalism-crushing-the-necks-of-creators related news, the 1.5 version of LANCER is out for download.
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Dec 8, 2017 08:32
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Leperflesh posted:2.9% +35 cents is essentially what everyone pays when they make a retail credit card transaction now. The difference is that the charge is invisible to customers at retail because the merchant pays it (and of course adds this additional cost to the price of goods and services to compensate). This is why some places offer a "cash discount" vs. credit. Issue is, Patreon wasn't -doing- individual CC transactions anyway. They do end-of-month omnibus billing. There's no savings, just more money for the corp.
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Dec 8, 2017 12:28
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Liquid Communism posted:Issue is, Patreon wasn't -doing- individual CC transactions anyway. They do end-of-month omnibus billing.  That's the danger with aligning your interests with an online earning platform's. Something like Uber or AirBnB or eBay or Twitch comes along and it works for you and you organize your livelihood around it. But it's a one-way arrangement, subject to revision at any time from the service, and they will screw you hard in an eyeblink. I've seen people build their businesses around putting properties on AirBnB only to have their account deactivated with no warning and no ability to contest the decision, or people who went all-in on driving for Uber only to see their per-ride compensation get clawed away to the level where it barely covers their gas. With some effort and luck you can make a good living streaming on Twitch or YouTube, but it's precarious because at any moment someone in a giant corporation can push a button and obliterate that and there's nothing you can do about it. The situations are made worse because these new spaces tend to quickly collapse to a single winner-take-all company dominating them and the people funding them are VCs and their business model is: 1) lose money to gain marketshare, 2) use that to become dominant in the market, 3) pivot and change your terms so you go from losing money to making money (taking it out of the hides of the people doing the earning). Also, lots of these spaces have little or no regulation so the power differential between you and the company is even starker. I'm old enough to remember the 1990s and all the different online auction sites that used to exist. eBay eventually drove them all into submission, and like clockwork their rates started rising and they started charging fees for things that used to be free. Sooner or later every one of these services is going to figure their in a position to really turn the screws on the people who have come to rely on them. Welcome to Cyberpunk 2017, I guess.
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Dec 8, 2017 14:58
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FMguru posted:it's precarious because at any moment someone in a giant corporation can push a button and obliterate that and there's nothing you can do about it. This is true for many contract situations in the rest of the world of employment too.
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Dec 8, 2017 17:02
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There’s a Japanese system called Kill Death Business that’s a sort of silly, fast PvP slugfest that would be absolutely perfect for a PbP game based off of Super Smash Bros but running it would require me to translate a significant portion of the rule book and I don’t have the time  I still really, really want to run it at some point though.
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Dec 8, 2017 17:09
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Getsuya posted:There’s a Japanese system called Kill Death Business that’s a sort of silly, fast PvP slugfest that would be absolutely perfect for a PbP game based off of Super Smash Bros but running it would require me to translate a significant portion of the rule book and I don’t have the time Do you have a patreon (lol) or something?
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Dec 8, 2017 18:20
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Moriatti posted:Do you have a patreon (lol) or something? No. Translating is a hobby and I’d like to keep it that way. I just don’t have time for all the translation projects I want to do. Why do you ask?
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Dec 8, 2017 18:49
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FMguru posted:
This is super absolutely true and a really good post, thanks. Subjunctive posted:This is true for many contract situations in the rest of the world of employment too. Yes. I've worked in small startups a couple of times (I'm at a giant corporation now) and I've seen lots of totally unreciprocated loyalty on the part of employees. The company's loyalty is not to its employees: it is loyal to the shareholders, and legally obliged to be so. More broadly: an ecosystem exists that supports specialized skills: so you're a buggy whip designer. And they systematic changes in the industry happen and the employee finds themselves not merely out of a job, but out of a career. Someone pushes a button and now your ability to make a decent living doing the thing you've been doing is just gone and you may have no ability to quickly pivot to some other similarly supportive employment. The coping strategy for this is obviously to be a generalist instead of a specialist: but specialization of skills is specifically the thing that modern economies reward; being a jack-of-all-trades can work, but you won't get a good high salary doing it, mostly. There's exceptions - general contractors come to mind - but like, most people don't become "a lawyer" they're environmental law lawyers or criminal defense attorneys; most people aren't "a doctor" they're oncologists or pediatricians or something; most people don't become "a programmer," they learn specific languages and work in particular subsectors of the industry. But to bring it back to trad gaming: think of how many companies, even middle-sized ones, are now dependent on Kickstarter, or DTRPG, or reviews on Boardgamegeek, etc. Those platforms have enabled a ton of people to build (very very modest) businesses, but one push of a button can wipe them out.
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Dec 8, 2017 18:52
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Getsuya posted:No. Translating is a hobby and I’d like to keep it that way. I just don’t have time for all the translation projects I want to do. I would probably throw money your way to aide with translating and am likely not alone.
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Dec 8, 2017 19:26
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Moriatti posted:I would probably throw money your way to aide with translating and am likely not alone. Same, a dollar a month to help speed along translations of stuff seems like a good exchange to me
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Dec 8, 2017 19:46
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Moriatti posted:I would probably throw money your way to aide with translating and am likely not alone. I appreciate the thought and that’s really cool of you but I enjoy translating and wouldn’t feel right taking money for translating a work I don’t have permission from the original owners to translate. Right now I’m focusing on free stuff that I have permission to translate and post for free. Now, that’s not to say I wouldn’t be interested in being part of a legit for-profit translation of a system with the agreement from the actual owners, but I myself don’t have the resources or know-how to put a project like that together. Edit: to be more specific, it’s easy to start projects where all I have to do is message the creator on Twitter and ask permission to translate and post it; much more difficult to contact a publisher and negotiate international publishing rights. Getsuya fucked around with this message at 19:54 on Dec 8, 2017 |
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Dec 8, 2017 19:52
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Yeah fan-translations are cool and I really respect you for doing them but making a profit of them without the ok from the original authors is thorny.
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Dec 8, 2017 19:54
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Was looking around online for some suggestions for one shot horror RPGs and found this gem of grog over on reddit.quote:Not understanding how Dread comes up so often in these discussions when it is simply a mechanic with only the scantest of settings.
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Dec 8, 2017 19:59
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Who would win a fight between Rand Al-Thor (full power) and Goku (Ultra Instinct)
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Dec 8, 2017 20:07
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Goku’s probably faster and at those power levels that’s all that really matters.
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Dec 8, 2017 20:12
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