Some good news & some bad news

I was originally planning to write a somewhat positive, lighthearted update regarding the progress of my personal affairs that will likely very soon start spilling over to the FA’s development. However, sadly I need to first address an urgent issues before I get back to the good news.

Patreon is changing its billing model in order to accommodate for Apple’s new billing policies by allowing ONLY a subscription-model for content creators and removing the ability to charge people at the end of the month instead. This change will come into effect at 1. of November this year (so in 3 days) and all current Patrons will be automatically migrated to the new subscription model. This basically means (at least based from my understanding) that the current Patrons will be billed twice this cycle – First at the end of this month and then at the start of the next one when the billing automatically changes to subscription.

Personally, I find this highly upsetting for multiple reasons, but the main one being the fact that I always saw this way of handling the billing at the end of the month as a show of trust - If people really want to support me, then they won’t bail at the very last day of the month while reaping the rewards anyways. The second reason why I find this incredibly unfair is the fact that people will likely essentially get billed twice at the start of this change, since there will be the last “tick” of the previous billing model (at the end of the month) and then the first “tick” of the new model (at the start of the next month) – I am just going to preface that I am not 100% sure it will be this way, but all current info I found and have available right now points towards it.

After pondering about these issues, I came up with three possible approaches/solutions to these issues for all my Patrons that I will outline below:

• Stay “subbed” as you are now and let the billing automatically transfer over to subscription-based model. This will likely bill you twice at the very start, but at the end of the day, it will just move payments from the end of the month to the start of it. While I most certainly don’t mind the idea of a double-donation if one would be willing and able, I also understand that such a luxury isn’t viable for a lot of people – Which brings us to the next option.

• Cancel your Patronage at the very end (30. or 31. this month) and re-sub after 1. of November. This way, you will just have a small “missing blip” of your FA Discord’s roles for 1-2 days when you will be lacking them and then all should be back to normal as before once you re-sub.

• In case your patience with Patreon has reached its end at this point for either this very reason alone (or any other that I heard people occasionally mention), I am also offering a third possibility: I recently finished creating a new page on Patreon’s alternative called Ko-Fi that still offers non-subscription model for their creators/patrons. So if that would be your cup of coffee, feel free to jump the ship and support me over there instead.
  Link: https://ko-fi.com/elvanos

This roughly sums up the situation and its issues & solutions... and now, for the promised good news!

This month marks the last investment into additional hardware for my new computer setup, which was a new, proper monitor. This addition, coupled with a fully set up programming environment on the new computer I got myself a few months ago, basically means that all my plans have finally come to fruition and I will be returning to FA’s development very soon – In case you are curious just how soon is “very soon”, then I have a little spoiler for you since I am currently on a vacation from my work, one that will last until 10. of November... after which there is nothing more planned ahead that should prevent me from resuming the development!