Changes and Growing Pains

After a lot of research and much deliberation, I've decided to revamp our Patreon model from the ground up. I want to apologize ahead of time for any confusion or irritation this may cause, but I do believe these changes re in the best interest of the project as a whole. 

To briefly recap a few of the bigger reward changes:

• Game access upon release is being dropped to a new 5$/month tier.

Upon reviewing a lot of other projects and their pricing models, I no longer feel comfortable putting release access of the game at 10$/month. It's very clear that the generally accepted practice is 5$/month and I don't see why we should be an exception at this time. Honestly, I'm hoping that this change will make supporting the project more accessible and inviting to people as we try to get news of the game out in front of more people after our next big update. 

• Voting power rewards are being removed.

It has come to my attention that people don't really value voting power rewards as much as I initially thought, and having voting power differences between patron tiers dissuades some people from having a voice, skews the data upon which we make decisions and puts development decisions in the hands of the few rather than the many - which doesn't put us in a good place to garner more support either. 

From now on, all patrons votes will be counted as equal. 

• Teasers and Art previews have been moved to the 10$/month tier. 

Essentially the idea is to move the core rewards - Latest game update - down to a more affordable tier, i.e. 5$/month, and give access to a lot of the additional content at the next tier level which will be 10$/month. 

•  "The Wish Box is now a Public Forum" 

From now on the Wish Box will be replaced with Public Forum and it will be available freely for everyone.  If you have any bright ideas, questions or concerns, you can submit it via the Public Forum thread (link here). We're always happy to take questions, suggestions or discuss ideas with fans. 

Again, I want to apologize if any of these changes upset some of our current patrons. I'm sure many of you are happy with the way things are, but I do wholeheartedly believe these changes are in the best interest of the project in general.

Thanks for reading and for your understanding on this matter!

Team Kuma, Tokyo. 2020. 01. 03