Changes Coming to Patron Tiers In February (Barring Public Outcry)

This is going to be a long post, and some parts may initially make some of you angry but I want to make it clear that current patrons will not have to pay more for the same rewards (I'll be repeating this multiple times, sorry). Some patrons will even be able to reduce their pledge and receive the same benefits, so there is no bad news for existing patrons.

If after reading the entire post you feel I'm being greedy/ an asshole/ an idiot, feel free to leave a comment, say something in the discord, or e-mail at contact@smutcube.com. If enough people are opposed I'll leave things the way they are now.

Summary of changes:

All existing patrons will keep their rewards at the current prices

The existing 7 tiers will be collapsed into 3: Square, Cube, and Tesseract each of which have their own rewards.

Cheats will decrease in price to $10 for ALL patrons

For NEW patrons Beta access will increase to $5 for NEW patrons

For NEW patrons Credits will increase in price to $15 for NEW patrons

Voting power will be simplified to 1 vote + 1 per $5 pledged (Square 2x, Cube 3x, Tesseract 4x).  Existing $1/$3 patrons will have 1x/2x voting power respectively.  This might be capped if I notice exorbitant pledges being used to sway voting results (i.e. if a poll option has 100 total weight across 10 votes or similar nonsense). 

Per tier changes and reasoning:

Regarding the $1 tier
The $1 tier is being unpublished so that new patrons can not sign up for it. They will still be able to vote at 1x voting power and have access to the discord.

Reasoning:

Many patrons confuse its rewards with the $3 tier and immediately repledge at $3 or unpledge in anger. The $1 tier also complicates uploading builds as I need to make two separate posts, one for everyone, and one for the $3+ tiers, spamming your inboxes and cluttering up the post history in the process. Due to its unpopularity I expect the $1 tier to taper off into non existence shortly after it becomes unpublished.

Regarding the $3/$5 tiers

The $3 tier will become Unpublished. This means All existing $3 patrons will continue to receive beta builds forever (as long as they maintain an active pledge). However, new patrons will no longer be able to sign up at the $3 tier, making the new lowest pledge the $5 tier.

Reasoning:

I'm not going to lie, this is largely motivated by finances but maybe not for the reasons most would expect. With the way pledges work on Patreon this change will benefit me more than it will harm future patrons. With a $3 pledge I receive ~80% of the money pledged, with a $5 pledge I receive 90% of the money pledged. I'm hoping demand for beta build pledges will fall at a commensurate rate so that the total amount taken from patrons remains the same, while the amount that gets to me will increase.

I'm not doing this without heavy consideration, I understand that it may come off as greedy but I feel it's best to do this change now as it will eliminate a nearly 10% loss in future revenue which benefits no one but PayPal/Visa/Master Card etc. I do not intend to increase the beta pledge amount any further than $5 and it's exclusively to reduce overall transfer fees.

However: I fully appreciate every dollar that anyone contributes. Especially those of you who have helped me reach the 4 digit mark that I thought would be impossible 1 year ago. I do not intend to increase the price or diminish the rewards of your tier ever. So I want to reiterate: Nothing will be changing for $3 patrons who pledge before 02/01/2019. I will also be making a good faith effort to establish a system that will recognize patrons who pledge before 02/01/19 so that they can re-pledge at $3 for full benefits should they cancel. This might not be possible with Patreon's system and it might not be feasible years from now, but if you find yourself in this category at a later date send me a message and I will attempt to accommodate. 

Regarding the $10/$15/$20/$25 tiers

These will be collapsed to a $10 and $15 tier and the rewards of credits and cheats will swap positions so that cheats will be available at $10, and credits will be available at $15.

Everyone in the $20 tier exclusively for the rewards: feel free to lower your pledge. Next month you will be overpaying otherwise (which I appreciate, but you may not).  

Reasoning (Cheats):

When I put cheats at the $20 mark it wasn't because I intended to gouge my patrons, it's because I don't want people to use cheats as I feel it cheapens the experience of the game. I naively thought that a $20 price tag would deter people from paying for just the cheats and that it would only be a "bonus" for people who were going to pledge $20 regardless. 

It turns out that cheats were way more popular than I expected and likewise the $20 tier has more patrons than I had ever anticipated. I personally feel that $20 a month is too much to charge for a new cheat code every 1-2 months since I never intended to make them a feature, they're just my debugging tools (quick nights/scene select) or pieces of unfinished/unimplemented content (golden fredrika/the radar/nightmare mode).

I don't want to dedicate more development time to creating things I don't want to have in game and I don't want to charge people exorbitant amounts for something I don't intend to add on a regular basis. I feel like $10 is more reasonable than $20 as I still want it to be a "bonus" while not extortion for people who really want cheats that badly.

Again, if you signed up for the $20 tier just for the cheats, you can save $10 a month by reducing your pledge.

Reasoning (Credits):

From my perspective credits have had the opposite problem of cheats: barely anybody is pledging just for the credits and I want to make the credits as rewarding as possible. Long story short: I hate cheats, some people love them; I love recognizing the extra support, most people are indifferent.

Part of the problem of having cheats at such a high tier was that it increased the number of people who qualified to be in the credits. While this isn't a real problem as they totally deserved to be recognized just the same as the $10 patrons if they so desired, I feel that credits as a reward should be a pure expression of "I'm pledging this amount because I want to support you regardless of what I receive in return". Having this recognition be incidental to the "real prize" of cheats cheapens them in a way I feel. Again, current $10 patrons will still be entitled to submit their name/alias to the credits list. Nobody's rewards are being reduced.