Regarding Upcoming Changes to Patreon Charges

so happy patreon decided against the proposed changes. i'm back as a patron and bumped up from the $1 to the $2. love and respect.

rrice64

No, assuming you're supporting more than one creator on Patreon, you're giving Patreon an extra 37 cents and EZA 28 cents.

I appreciate you guys addressing this issue and that you understand your patrons' side of it. I can afford the cost but that's only me. What about those who can't? Patreon's policy change sucks. I just hope EZA won't lose too much support.

LeeLore

Easy Allies, I was wondering if you would share on Twitter or with Patreon how these Fee changes have affected you overnight? I have witnessed many Patreon Creators losing $1 and $2 and other low tier pledges in droves. Perhaps if you have had any kind of impact regarding this, it may sway their decision to go with this plan. Thanks.

Jason Walstrom

My wife and I will continue to support all the hard work you guys do.

So I give you guys an extra ~$0.65 a month now? Big deal! Please take it!

Anontastic

I'm with you 'til the end of the line

Wait... is this added to the overall pledge? Or to each separate creator?

Star Tsurugi

The only real problem I have with the change is getting hit with the transaction fee several times, when it is a one time cost for the whole bundle for Patreon. It means I have to think a lot harder about every future creator I support and about every single one of the ones i support already.

Markus

I’ve tweeted this to them, but here are my questions for Patreon after my initial review of the situation, and given the statement in their latest update that the new fee structure “was never (and still isn’t) about making more money for Patreon”: 1) In your latest update, you describe the new fees as “a service fee so @Patreon can cover the third-party fees.” What are the exact third-party fees being paid by Patreon for a given transaction? 2) By example, Stripe’s standard, no-volume fee is 2.9% + $0.30, or $0.05 less than your new fees. Is @Patreon pocketing an additional $0.05 *per transaction*? More? As @Patreon is already paid a 5% "cut" for services rendered, why is this amount anything but a pass through? 3) Stripe (and others) offer volume discounts for enterprise users (like @Patreon). If the standard no-volume, 2.9% + $0.30, is being used, why was no attempt made to negotiate a discount? If the amount is discounted, why are patrons being asked to pay full freight? 4) Standardization of transaction processing fees is good, no doubt, but how does that standardization require a “pledge plus” rather than “inclusive cost” approach? If the issue is technological, what steps are being taken to rectify @Patreon’s technology deficit? 5) Given that most “grandfathered” subscriptions will have pledges paid on the same day (1st of the month), why are separate $0.35 fees required by @Patreon for each same-day transaction? Isn't Patreon set to make quite a bit of money here if only one third-party fee is charged? 6) Finally, as options are always better than mandates, why has @Patreon not offered creators the option to (i) set costs at a flat “inclusive” model, and (ii) reject your “anniversary date” approach so as to avoid the imposition of additional transaction fees?

Nikki from Transport Evolved suggested that one solution for patreons was to reduce our pledges in line with the fee increase, she said she'd still get about the same amount of money. So if you were pledging $10 dollars reduce it to around $9.37 and once fees have been taken this is about $10 to you and the people you are pledging towards would still get around the same amount as well. Now obviously when you are only doing a $1 pledge we can't do that as it is probably the minimum but hey for the slightly larger pledges this might work out the same for the patreon and not affect the creator too badly also. Better than dropping our pledges? Personally I'll absorb the cost but it is one to think about.

Yea what the hell is going on I give you 5 bucks and Patreon is supposed to figure it out not tax me? Do I change go more less stop altogether why you make me think this way lol. Sounds fishy to me why a tax? And whatever that tax is it should be taken out of the 5 I already gave you not added? Am I crazy or is this backwards?

John Wingate

I'm not exactly a fan of how Patreon are doing this but I intend to keep my pledge as is, the increase isn't insane and in the end I still want to support EZA as best as I can. Hope this doesn't end up hurting you guys too much though.

I'd say everyone who is reconsidering their pledges should ask themselves who they are really harming. In the end it will be Easy Allies who will suffer the most and receive less. I also assume that the increase in contributions is rather marginal for the individual. We all knew that Patreon took their share. I actually thought it would be more around 10 than 5 percent. So all is good on my end, and while I can understand that people may want to appeal to Patreon to voice their disagreement, I hope this will not lead to a decline in patrons. After all we all want that studio.

Dear creator: it pains me to say this, but I will be cancelling all my pledges with Patreon effective immediately, in protest of this unacceptable new fee system. Hopefully a drop in their profit will make Patreon fix this quickly. I know this isn't fair to you, I will be watching your free posts and Youtube videos if you find another service or set up a way to donate to you directly. I'm more than willing to send a check to a P.O. box if it comes to that.

There's no excuse for a patron having to figure a percentage of anything, it needs to come off the back end. Most of my donations are a dollar a month and that means over a 37% increase in my pledges without my permission. I would suggest creators see if maybe they can use another service/take donations directly until Patreon sees that this is a terrible idea. Otherwise they will be losing a lot of pledges.

Yeah the currency conversion was already bad enough.. There's no simple solution when it comes to money anyway.

PKFC

Read a lot about this and seen similar statements and sentiments expressed by KFG. I will continue at the same level as I feel this is a Patreon decision NOT an EA decision. There are rumblings on social media against Patreon though with some seeing this as a way of upping their cut disguised as improving things for creators . Someone suggested and this is not my math or figure I'm just quoting a tweeter who suggested Patreon's actual cut per pledge was going up by 118%. Any one able to run the numbers?

Andrew Mac

Why they don't just take the $0.35 fee ONCE for the TOTAL contributions you make +2.9%, is weird, and damaging to people who try and spread out smaller donations. At best, it makes them look a bit inept. At worst, it makes it looks like they're trying to juice revenue at the expense of donors. Given I don't think they're money people are dumb, I can only assume this is a cash grab to counter taking on too much venture capitol.

Sam Sorensen

Indeed they have. I don't want to rail too much here (old lawyer shouts at cloud), but this is the kind of sleight of hand (number of fee invoices v. amount of fees) that raises red flags any time I am doing diligence on a company. For me, this made me much more wary, not less. Bare minimum it very much does not answer the question of why the switch was made from an "inclusive" model to a "pledge plus" model. -Rick

Patreon has added an update to the update, if you will: <a href="https://blog.patreon.com/updating-patreons-fee-structure/">https://blog.patreon.com/updating-patreons-fee-structure/</a>

It is an odd change. Fortunately it is something I can absorb and will continue to support my creators happily. Patreon is by far my favorite way to support creators and I am glad for all the awesomeness it has brought me. That being said, this change has an impact that overall could be negative and that makes me sad and wish Patreon considered it properly.

ThunderRazor

I just upped my pledge back to $5 a few weeks ago but due to a mixture of dislike of what Patreon itself is doing and just not having the finances to play ball with them on that game, I'll probably end up dropping back to $1 for this. I'd drop out entirely but I still wanna support you even if only for a couple of cents.

I'm really not a fan of how they're trying to spin this like they're doing Creators a favor but none of the cost is being offset by them personally, it's coming right out of the people that have already been paying. That's just not right. I can see how shifting the fees from you to us benefits you, but it's a hell of a lot easier for a place making 10s of thousands to gauge their finances month to month than the 6000+ patrons being told they need to pay more EVERY month. I don't know why Patreon doesn't see that. This is why you don't try to operate/live beyond your means, if there's creators out there who pushed for this because they can't judge where they're at financially month to month then they probably shouldn't be using crowdfunding, the whole nature of it is unstable, it's not guaranteed, even with this change.

ZyloWolfBane

Got some bad news bub. The money made toward milestones is the take home minus deductions. This won't make a difference. Though it could cause some people to lower their pledges, thus decreasing the total revenue for EZA and getting me further and further away from that sweet sweet Trailer Jones. (If we ever get to 1k of the goal, I plan on playing DnD with Ben or sponsoring a Frame Trap. Same boat man, all I want is that Trailer Jones!)

Thank you for the note. My note to Patreon: I get what is trying to be accomplished but this is actually really upsetting. Paying a flat fee is something I actually really enjoyed about Patreon and I was aware you took your cut. This reversal will have economic repercussions for content creators and that's just trash. Especially with 1 month before it is enacted. I will continue to support the Allies but I do not support this decision. Ick.

To put this in perspective, Patreon had a round of investor capital last year that amounted to $30 million. I find it absurd they're trying to paint this as "This change helps creators and keeps Patreon up and running!" As someone who has followed tech companies for a long time this feels like the same kinda posturing you always see when a website is trying to attract potential buyers. They want their 2018 books to look squeaky clean and profitable, and it wouldn't shock me at all if Amazon or Google purchases them within the year Between this and YouTube it's been a tough year for creator platforms. For whatever it's worth, I won't be going anywhere or adjusting my pledge

Josh Bossie

C'mon Patreon, it's obviously not about what you say when you're charging a per pledge fee, but pool pledges for transaction fees. You could at least just say you want more money and give a rationale. And charge an overall fee, not a per pledge fee that just makes it harder for people to give small pledge amounts to multiple creators... I won't be changing my pledge to Easy Allies, but I have to drop a few other pledges and will just donate directly to them through other means.

Kevin Weaver

Not cool patreon. Not cool! And that on my birthday:( but it won’t effect my pledge

Tim Bechen

Ok I dug into it and this got even more interesting: I updated my EZA pledge while in Germany and it is being processed with German VAT of 19%. I have other pledge that I made in Poland and it has Polish VAT of 23% If i try to update/edit EZA pledge it wants to tax me with Polish VAT of 23% so my 5$ pledge should cost me around 6,7$ after the change is implemented. Funny that Patreon discovers your location/VPN and adjusts to you.

Łukasz Wizła

It's silly that they are improving the transparency for the benefit of the creators but at the cost of reducing the transparency to the patreons. I will pay EZA the additional added-on fees as well but for the other creators, I already have a fixed total amount I'm willing to give per month and these add-ons are going to make me go over. I'm going to have to see what it amounts to and cut some. It's not like Patreon allows us to input specific values either so we can play with the fees (e.g. I want to pay $7.00 including fees to X creator, so I will give $[(7.00-0.35)*0.9718]=$6.46. NOPE. Can't do it.

crazyjackal

It has to differ between countries. For example due to my country VAT for 5$ pledges Patreon took around 5.95 $ from my account. I understand with new system I will pay something like 5 + 0,1 + 0,35 + VAT from all of it (around 1$) so my new 5$ pledge will cost around 6,50$ instead of 5.95$.

Łukasz Wizła

They say it’s in the service of transparency, but fail to point out how they’re pocketing the batch transaction fee savings when a single patron pledges to multiple creators. They could’ve done pledge amount + 2.9% and charged one 35 cent fee across all creators but they didn’t. If Patreon hasn’t changed their position on this by the end of the month I’ll be pulling pledges from the site and switching to donating directly via PayPal/StreamLabs. Patreon was getting 5% before and the way they handled this means they’ll instead get nothing from me.

Pull your pledge from the site and donate directly via StreamLabs

The public facing amount is what we get after fees have been deducted. So this change doesn't make a difference in that regard. -Bloodworth

Easy Allies

will this lower the amount needed to reach the last 2 goals? after all is said and done, this could add a few thousand towards reaching new goals.

What really sucks about this (other than it being charged per pledge) is that there's no way to "vote with your wallet" by removing support for Patreon without hurting those campaigns that you've signed up to support. So we'll just have to keep on keeping on and hope that Patreon learns from negative feedback on this change but that's doubtful.

Nicholas Poer

Suggestion for those who are now considering dropping their pledges: maybe support the Allies every few months at a higher level rather then every month at a lower level. For example, if you're a $1 patron and can't pay the extra $0.38 every month, pledge $5 for one month, cancel, then repledge after 5 months. That way you're still giving the Allies the same amount but giving Patreon less (you would be giving an extra $0.50 rather then $1.90, if I'm calculating correctly). I know it's not ideal (for patrons or creators, Patreon seems to be the clear benefactor as a result of this change), but it's still an option to consider.

Dumb change, but I won’t change my pledge because of it.

Cliff Boyd

Pretty lame on Patreon's part.

Minamik

As a $1 tier patreon this is sad, Im not from the US so every dollar I purchase depend on the current change in my country, each month I do this for the allies, but now I will need to purchase double of what Im currently doing, I know that the allies work cost every of those dollars and I will keep with my support but hopefully all the other patreons in the $1 tier continue their pledge too. L&amp;R

I'm definitely willing to spend a few cents more a month to make your lives easier. But thank you for your note!

James McCoy

If you guys will be getting more of a net take from this restructuring, is there any chance that you could lower the milestones to get us some Trailer Jones?

Andrew Malkin

Thanks for this, I will not be changing my pledge amount. Seems like a bad move and creators are only going to lose supporters as a result.

Cody Johnstone

As many have stated before, this won't affect my pledge to EZA, but if will affect smaller creators. If I had a budget of $10 for smaller contributions, only 7 creators would be supported under the new fee structure

Ricardo Uribe

I'm a patron for many many artists so this hurts

VGJunky

Thanks for this explanation allies. This is gonna suck for people with who support multiple patrons or people with really high pledges. I only support EZA on patreon so this won't really affect me that much. L&amp;R allies

Chun Lau

I am in for the wild ride of Easy A no worries :D

I'm with you guys either way!

Thanks for being honest with us! You can count on me to continue at my level of support.

DualOrange

Thanks for the clear and honest note!

TravelingSnowman

It's the multiple pledge thing that really sucks, which I'm sure many of Allies Patrons are doing. I only pledge to EZA so it's not affecting me too much, still I think it's a bad move on Patreon's part.

I was really excited to finally be able to pledge as a patron and while this may effect me I’m hopeful that I can continue to support you guys. thanks for the clear and transparent update!

Classic/Classy EZA response to this change in payment, totally up front and transparent. No worries from my end, I'm EZA for life. Really just sucks for those that are giving literally as much as they can, I feel for them and if they can no longer support there favorite content creators that sucks.

You guys are the best. It’s crappy Patreon are doing this, but oh well. We can handle it!

Ryan Hegarty

You get charged for each individual Pledge. So if you pledge to like 10 different Creators, that's straight away $3.50 that Patreon is charging you for pledging, even if you're only pledging $1 to each Creator.

Harrison Holt-McHale

I feel like this should be something that individual Patreon pages should be able to choose. If you're a successful Patreon, you may choose to take that chunk out of your earnings so it won't affect your patrons and any goodwill you've established there. But if you're a smaller Patreon, you could maybe choose to put that on your patrons and hope that your smaller-knit community is understanding. OR a flexible approach, where individual patrons can decide if they want to chip-in to cover those fees or not. Kickstarter does a similar approach to "Fixed" and "Flexible" funding structures.

Scott A. Ford

I give what little I can to a few creators who I feel deserve my money, Easy Allies being one of them. As I said on Twitter, this will increase my outgoing on Patreon from $5 to over $6. While to some that might seem like a small amount, but if I could give that, then I'd be doing so already, to one of the 3 creators that I already support. It's especially frustrating because it seems like this will mainly affects people like me who patronise multiple creators on the platform. It's a flat $0.35 + 2.97% for each individual pledge, not just your overall Patreon outgoings for the month. This isn't even considering the fact that I also have to change the money from GBP to USD so I lose money there already, and Patreon wants me to spend more for no benefit to me? I'm honestly unsure whether to just give in at this point, because as you guys say this seems like a pretty locked in decision (that's definitely the impression I got when I read the email). I'll be forced to drop one of my pledges. Or should I just drop supporting creators entirely on Patreon in protest. It'll likely do nothing, but you gotta vote with your wallet I guess. I'll decide in the next few days I guess.

Harrison Holt-McHale

This probably affects people that give to a lot of patreons. Do they get charged for each patreon or 1 toal pledge.

Ibrahim Sozer

I personally don't mind paying a bit more, but this is just bad policy on Patreon's part all-around. Operational charges should be handled by the business invisible to the consumer. Patreon is also wading into politics now by telling people to support censorship by opposing the repeal of Net Neutrality. Partisanship and stupidity are boundless.

Plus exchange rate for those outside the U.S.

Scott A. Ford

ok i've added 2 bucks hope no more changes for 5 years at least

Rainmaker

Twitch

Henry Ramirez

This was a super shady move on Patreons part, but I can see how content creators can benefit greatly from this change. Patrons who support multiple creators will feel this burn though.

Furious Wasabi

So will pledgers lower what they give now if they can't afford this change? If that is the case for the majority of pledgers this totally sucks.

SmorgasLord

They've kinda got us over a barrel, eh. The more transparent thing would have simply been to let us know how much of our existing pledges already went to Patreon (and perhaps make that a flat rate rather than the nebulous '7-15%'). Hopefully whatever 'marginal increase' you do end up getting will more or less cover any dropped/lowered subs.

Samuel Cardwell

The really shady part is, they're going from taking around 5-6% from the people recieving the money (like EZA), to 5% from EZA + 3% from the patron, + 0.35$ from patron. that's an increas of 3% + some spare change which will mostly affect people who are on the lower end, but affect them alot... that's some backdoor shady deals right there :) anyhow, just in case you lose out a bit, I'll up my pledge.

Mazrim Taim

Well written notice - THANK YOU. I agree, I think this up-charge to the Patron's is a bad change, because it muddies the waters of what should be a simple matter. Not I pledge $X plus whatever additional fees are deemed necessary. If that invalidates lower valued pledges, then do that. Pledges start at a minimum threshold so that fees are covered sufficiently. I also am a great believer in slippery slopes and this starts a precedent of messing with the Patrons and their desired pledge amounts. Next thing will be a one time management fee of $5 to setup the pledge and so forth.

Steven Jenner

While I get the increase sucks at most it's less than a dollar more for most tiers. It sucks if you subscribe to multiple patreons but $1 dollar shouldn't break the bank. What they need to do is join all the payments a person makes to multiple patreons into a single charge and one fee

Faraz Rizvi

Allies, This change won't stop myself from contributing but in order to aid those that can't justify the additional cost, have you considered lowering the barriers for the various tiers? I think in the face of this decision a generous act like that could work very favourably for EZA. Much love &amp; respect, keep up the wonderful work. - DDSlawson

Daniel Slawson

Have you folks considered flattr or the upcoming drip services?

I hope it does not affect you in the end, but Patreon seems to be getting unreasonable here. I guess adding the fee to the pledge would be more transparent.

Mugen Himura

This is terrible. Is there other avenues we can use to support the Allies? It seems like Patreon just pulled the rug out of a bunch of creators feet.

So that roughly translates to me paying an extra $1.08 a month or 27 cents a week at the $25 tier I'm at. I think I can afford an extra quarter a week, personally. Heck i found a quarter just typing this message.

Joey and Cait

already pay an extra 25% VAT on my pledge, so another 3% wont make a difference here :) still a really weird change from patreons side.

Mazrim Taim

Someone can check my basic math, but the actual costs to patrons after the change will be: $1.00 -&gt; $1.38 $2.00 -&gt; $2.41 $5.00 -&gt; $5.50 $7.00 -&gt; $7.55 $10.00 -&gt; $10.64 $20.00 -&gt; $20.93 $25.00 -&gt; $26.08 $50.00 -&gt; $51.80 $60.00 -&gt; $62.09 $200.00 -&gt; $206.15 $250.00 -&gt; $257.60 $500.00 -&gt; $514.85 Excluding any additional taxes that might be required (such as VAT).

this is why it stinks that easy allies "is a patreon." you have no control over this stuff. hopefully it all works out

choco factory

That is pretty shady on Patreons end, they already don't include VAT, which I was unaware of at first. (Fair enough to add the VAT after, as it is region dependant). But the fee is constant and should be included in the pledge. This mostly effects people on the lower end of tiers. It's going to be a 38% increase for people on 1$ pledges. It should be calculated in the cost of the pledge. And allow the creators to scale the tiers appropriately.

Aaron Kirk - Kurxx

I think it will be $7.60 and $5.50

Ibrahim Sozer

Now this is how to address a pressing issue. Good job, guys! Patreon passing the buck to consumers in the name of "value" and "transparency" while putting smaller creators at risk is pretty smarmy no matter how you slice it.

Matt Karwoski

I'll still be here. These guys are worth every cent.

Morgan Mohalla

Boy, in attempting to make more transparency, Patreon has actually made it weirder and more difficult to understand.

Daniel Askew

I literally started pledging this month so I’ll stick around. Thanks for the message about this. That transparency is why I’m willing to keep donating my $1.64 each month.

AC

Thank you for making a statement with such alacrity, Allies. I have to say, this does sound of a cash grab (on Patreon's part) to me, particularly given the statistics given. If processing was 7-15% before (or 5% as the statement indicates), it is difficult for me to see the justification in a near 40% processing fee on $1 pledges. That flat fee simply doesn't make sense given what we know. I have every desire and intention to continue my support of EZA, but am unsure of my support of Patreon. I will be considering my options, and would very much appreciate the possibility of alternatives. -Rick

Np

Sven Van Lathem

Thanks for this Brandon. I love EZA and the way you try to approach games from a cynicism free angle. I guess for me I’ll have to look at how the numbers work out, and may need to drop from the $7 to $5 tier, but hopefully not. I hope you understand if I do end up making that call.

John Price

Doesn't really affect me much since I already pay an additional 25% in VAT so this increase is neither here nor there. It sucks for the people who it matters to though.

Olf Himself

Meh..got you guys covered. I don't mind chipping in a bit more for moi fellow allies. Upping my pledge. Been meaning to increase it anyway.

Dileepan M

I think a good idea might be to post somewhere a breakdown of what each level would be with fees included so people have a concrete understanding in which tier they can afford to stay in. Since the numbers are no longer flat round numbers. Just a thought! Love and Respect and I’m not going anywhere :)

Thanks for the clear and concise explanation. I hope it doesn't cause a hemorrhaging of patrons, but, for those of us that can afford it, hopefully we can make up the difference.

Alison Burt

I'm here to stay, L&amp;R

Brandon Ray

I asked about this in my Cup of Jones submission, but I appreciate a communal response.

Brandon K Gann

I don't think it will affect EZA as much as smaller creators. That's real awful change for them.

Eric Grynberg

for what they say in the post, the difference between what they received and would receive after the change, is around 40 dollars, so I doubt it will affect goals.

César Villa

I’ve already tweeted at Patreon in hopes they reconsider. While I don’t mind, I’m sure that many will. Ultimately this seems like it will drive transparency, but at the cost of additional income for creators. A simple breakdown of “Pledged” vs “Passed to Creators” on a creators homepage would have achieved the same goal.

Some creators are reducing pledge tiers by $0.50 to ease the hit to patrons. I'm not telling you to do that, but for those of us who support several creators the fees on smaller pledges will add up. <a href="https://twitter.com/scully1888/status/938748811262005248" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://twitter.com/scully1888/status/938748811262005248</a>

iconmaster

Is this going to affect goals since you will get extra money

Ibrahim Sozer

Thanks for addressing this. As soon as I’d received the email I hoped we’d hear from you and you delivered as always.

An extra $2 a month isn't going to kill me, so I'm fine with this. Thanks for being transparent as always and for all of your hard work!