ON THE (DUMB) PATREON CHANGES

More on what the Patreon changes mean later, and what it means for the Delta Green Patreon, but for now, briefly:

1) If you pay through Apple iOS, I would recommend you change to web payment.

2) I will be forced to charge a monthly subscription instead of per post. Most here pay about $5-$6 per month for 5-6 posts (and I've been giving away 300+ pp full colour PDF books!), so if most pledge $4-$6 monthly, things should remain as they are.

3) If revenue drops dramatically, I'll have to figure out if it's affordable to even do it. I love it, but I have a ton of other paying work to do! And now, what's REALLY going on:

I do well on #Patreon. I have almost 2k patrons. I imagine I'm in the top whatever count of #TTRPG people on the platform. I see a lot of comments about this and that. But I also did many years in #SF #tech. Here's what's likely going on:

#Apple has always taken 30%. #Epic sued them for several billion over it, and Apple is cracking down on people that circumvent it. Do they deserve it? The app store is REALLY fucking expensive to run, but is it that expensive? Probably not. But they certainly don't make their profit from it.

Patreon is funded by venture capitalists who are ALWAYS looking for an exit. They want to sell the company and cash out. That is their entire purpose in life. There is no other goal for that company. Artists rights, making artists earn a livable wage, blah blah blah. Corporate PR. Nothing more.

They are on their 10th round of funding. And their "space" — organized payment solutions for artists with some simple database management will be valuable ground for...not that much longer. Soon, someone will ship an out of the box home solution to it and Patreon will be dead.

Dead also equals "all the VC money goes up in smoke", so they are very likely trying to bind up all the loose ends in the company, put a bow on it, and sell it all to some horrific concern which will try to exploit it, and in doing so, almost certainly cause it to fail.

Of note is this: Patreon has been trying to kill "pay per post" for years, and have now folded it under the "Apple is demanding 30%!" umbrella to blame Apple for this too.

This removal is almost certainly for other reasons to goose their profitability to make a more attractive purchase target.

So, here's the truth. Due to the nature of "line must always go up" businesses, ALL concerns like this will always exist in 3 phases:

1) NEAT!
2) Wait, this was working, why are you doing this?
3) Dissolution.

Patreon was at NEAT! for a long time. Longer than should have been possible, really. But now, we're clearly at the end of phase 2.

Next up will be "Patreon has been bought by <HORRIFIC COMPANY> but no changes are planned!"

Then out come the chainsaws. Artists best get used to it.

How do I feel about it? It sucks horribly. Trust me, I have a TON to lose from such an outcome. But how I feel about it and what they are going to do have absolutely zero relationship.

The goal of Patreon is not to support artists, it never was, it is to sell the company at a multiple of what was invested.