Howdy, Folks! And a joyful GURPSDay to all!
Originally, I was working on this post to address the recent Patreon debacle, but it seems as though someone on their PR team finally figured out they were completely shooting themselves in the foot and just today they announced “We messed up. We’re sorry, and we’re not rolling out the fees change.”
To give the briefest of overviews, your $1/month pledges would have gone up to $1.38/month… for every single Creator you support. Patreon abruptly announced last week that they were completely changing the way they handle their processing fees by forcing those fees onto the patrons and off of the creators (something not one creator I have ever spoken with asked for), and also by applying a “service fee” to every single transaction processed even though they, themselves, are charged in bulk aggregate, not per transaction. In particular, this hit patrons who support numerous creators with smaller amounts — which seems extremely common for the RPG/Gaming community — the hardest.
All of this was overwhelmingly seen as an unjustified cash grab with zero regard given to the actual creators or their community of patrons, and I’m very pleased Patreon has chosen to hold off/reverse that decision (that is, there will not be a fee increase at the end of December). However, that doesn’t help the many, many creators who lost substantial numbers of supporters or closed their Patreons entirely, and that is a real shame. Personally, I feel like this is a black mark on Patreon’s reputation that they will have to work very hard to overcome. But, for now, I’ll take it as a win.
Regarding the Game Geekery blog and my ongoing GURPS evangelization, it came at an awkward time because I’m looking to expand the blog, not have it diminish! Right now I’m working on the annual year-end review for 2017. It was an incredible year for GURPS and the blog, and I’m looking forward to talking about it. The plan is to post that next Thursday, then take off the final Thursday of the year, and hit the ground running strong in 2018.
I hope you’ll continue to stick around in the new year and enjoy some of the good stuff coming!
If you enjoyed this post and others like it, might you consider the Game Geekery Patreon?
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