Alternatives to Patreon - Maybe for Adult games

seyfer110

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Aug 5, 2016
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As for Sponsorion, check this out:



They post their latest news on that blog. They started off in December and haven't gotten out of the mockups phase yet... They are lazy as fuck! If breathing wasn't something automatic, they would be dead already.
Well, their launch ETA is set for Spring, so they still have 2 months and a half;
meanwhile all we can do is to wait and see...
It's not like we have an actualy alternative already...
 

HiEv

Member
Sep 1, 2017
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So, what about using a service that uses Stripe?


Those fees don't look too horrible to me. And it looks like it might be 'Vanilla Visa' (anonymous CC) friendly.
You didn't check Stripe's " " section, did you?

They specifically do not allow, "Adult content and services - Pornography and other obscene materials (including literature, imagery and other media); sites offering any sexually-related services such as prostitution, escorts, pay-per view, adult live chat features"

I'd also be very curious to hear how the 'Buy Me A Coffee' thing is working out for Mr. Dots... Stripe is one of the payment methods at Buy Me a Coffee...

Well, yesterday he got 27 "coffees", which equals $128.25 (after fees), which isn't bad for one day. That's roughly $16/hour for an 8 hour day.

The fact that DMD was sorta kinda sidelined (multiple months between updates now) makes me think it's no longer the main priority, and that his other game is the cash cow now, so it's hard to judge how well the Buy Me A Coffee revenue stream might be doing.
That other game, "Melody", is going to help pay for the cost of continuing to work on DMD, so I wouldn't be too upset. See the details .

There's been no visible progress on the front... that site essentially hasn't changed since the 'coming soon' splash page was first posted several months ago.
Honestly, I'm not surprised. When they said "spring 2018", I read that as "summer 2018". Setting up a new business, especially with all of these legal and monetary concerns, is likely far more complicated than they expected.
 

OhWee

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You didn't check Stripe's " " section, did you?
I didn't notice the link, thanks for your response, it clarifies things r.e. Stripe. Nonetheless, Buy Me A Coffee uses Stripe, even on Mr. Dot's page. Of course, on Buy Me A Coffee, Mr. Dots is just some random artist...

It's been a while since I saw the last time Mr. Dot's Patreon numbers were public, but I seem to remember - well over a year ago - that he had crossed the $14k/month mark on Patreon (does anyone remember the actual figure?). At that point he hid his monthly total.

Graphtreon still tracks the number of patrons. Looking at the list, it appears that a number of the major players have slipped in their rankings since this whole anti-incest crusade at Patreon started...


I do think that Buy Me A Coffee is one of the revenue streams that is worth looking into. Not everyone is willing to commit to monthly pledges, but may want to give you a one time donation without jumping through a bunch of hoops. Sure, that revenue stream is a bit less predictable, but I think it'd average out over time...
 
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Yoshiiki

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Nov 10, 2017
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Adultpledge sucks and with the Payza fiasco, I doubt they will survive the year either.
No comment on issue if it sucks or not, didn't check it, because no EU support for now.
I still wonder how their idea of making a deal with nutaku to solve money issue went. Honestly, that's not dumb since they [nutaku] are already processing tons of small amounts (buy gold/crystals/whatever) everyday so having something patreon-based would work. Of course, only if nutaku will even bother :p
 

gamersglory

Xpression Games
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But Patreon is not Amazon. "Adult content" is allowed.

You cannot:
  • Create any content or reward with nudity, or realistic depictions of sexual or violent acts, unless you flag the page as Adult Content and make the posts only viewable by patrons.

And then we have this



:pokerFace:
True there not Amazon but they have investors that they have to listen too and Paypal and Stripe as well. They can't ignore that.
 

PinkysBrain

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Jan 27, 2018
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How many hoops would people be willing to jump for an alternative?

Would people be willing to setup a MetaMask wallet (1) and fill it with some Ethereum/Tether? (2) Once they have that, money transfer could be done relatively user friendly. Use smart contracts to setup the subscriptions so the service doesn't store any money itself, everything going directly to the creators, limiting the ways it can all go horribly wrong (3). Allow the user to end the contracts at any time, getting the remaining tether in it back, or refill them of course when necessary.

If necessary, with a little bit more hoopjumping you could do it all over zeronet instead of the web.

(1)Metamask is a browser extension which is among other things a wallet, which allows web integration
(2)Slightly more complex than it sounds, they'd need to register at at least one exchange to do so, potentially two exchanges if you use Tether and they can't buy it direct in their country.
(3)Mostly invisible to the user, they'd just click subscribe and then click through some MetaMask confirmations to setup the contract and fill it up.
 

Yoshiiki

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Nov 10, 2017
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How many hoops would people be willing to jump for an alternative?
In all honesty? Zero, none.
That's why alternatives to all social media out there don't kick off. While those that are interested in those, whatever the reason, are less than 10%-5% of whole user base, rest of people don't care/don't want to bother.
You need either natural migration (example, myspace->FB) that can be stupidly unpredictable or you need to take down service you want alternative for.
 

PinkysBrain

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Jan 27, 2018
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I guess, realistically though cryptocurrency is the only alternative. Every other service will run into the same restrictions from credit card processors and paypal as patreon.
 

Yoshiiki

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I guess, realistically though cryptocurrency is the only alternative. Every other service will run into the same restrictions from credit card processors and paypal as patreon.
Yeah, but cryptocurrency has too many risks related to it. Plus, only issue here is paypal. Neither VISA nor Mastercard have any issues with that content. Otherwise you couldn't buy things on mangagamer and they have shitload of incest or rape games there. Even if patreon had to remove all nsfw content, it wouldn't make a dent in paypal income. We are talking about company that can loose a million here and there and they won't mind.
Issue however isn't with paypal itself, but retards behind it.
 

PinkysBrain

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Jan 27, 2018
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Verotel used to be the credit card processor of choice for the bestiality industry and now they have a list of a mile long. Those are almost certainly imposed from above, I don't think they suddenly found religion. It's kind of indicative that the only aggregator Adultpledge could find was Payza.

Japan is a large enough country to get special treatment for its cultural oddities, but that doesn't do much good unless some international patreon alternative is setup there, Enty doesn't allow foreign creators AFAICS.

Crypto has the advantage that it can be setup with minimal investment, just need some webmonkey's time and maybe one expert to check the . No need for a large up front investment to deal with the high risk processor reserve requirements, no need to deal with the administrative risks of VAT. Because the service doesn't handle the money, it goes straight from the client to the creator.
 

Yoshiiki

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Verotel used to be the credit card processor of choice for the bestiality industry and now they have a list of a mile long. Those are almost certainly imposed from above, I don't think they suddenly found religion. It's kind of indicative that the only aggregator Adultpledge could find was Payza.
Yes, they did found religion, self-righteous one. Just because it doesn't involve church, doesn't mean it's not working the same way. Such content is offensive, so we will tell people what is good and what's not, because we can't tell difference between fiction and reality. This is what all those hippies are pushing, glad people supported it because it seemed correct, now it's coming back at everyone, to anyone who did and still is supporting it - good job.

Japan is a large enough country to get special treatment for its cultural oddities, but that doesn't do much good unless some international patreon alternative is setup there, Enty doesn't allow foreign creators AFAICS.
Japan has it's own strong, local market that hates the west and is afraid of it at the same time. Why? Same reason as above.

Crypto has the advantage that it can be setup with minimal investment, just need some webmonkey's time and maybe one expert to check the . No need for a large up front investment to deal with the high risk processor reserve requirements, no need to deal with the administrative risks of VAT. Because the service doesn't handle the money, it goes straight from the client to the creator.
Which crypto? Did it already crash? No? It will.
Also, due to banks being fucktards, there is already a list being composed of cryptocurrencies that will get banned.
Those are the risks that people will find after spending a second when googling, good luck hoping anyone will go for it.

While I do like idea of taking on big banks and companies, it's not happening until almost half of world would go against it. And here we are talking about less than 1% of that half trying. It's annoying, sure, but you would have a better luck trying to implant new shareholders and CEOs. But then again, world can be very dynamic and unpredictable, so who knows? At least worth trying, but any money invested should be considered lost until it's actually back with preferable interest.
 

PinkysBrain

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Jan 27, 2018
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As I mentioned there's Tether, which will remain stable as long as Bitfinex buys every Tether sold for a dollar. It's conceivable they malinvested or fraud disappeared some of the money they made on selling Tether (one dollar for every Tether ever created). Assuming they just threw it into moneymarket funds and US federal bonds though, which would still make them a fuckton of money, they can keep it stable for as long as the US government lets them. Even if the US government steps in, they will almost certainly allow people to get their money out just like they did with e-gold.

Ignoring that, lets say you use Ethereum and you subscribe in 3 months increment (with adjustment of the Ethereum subscription rates every time you reup). Keep 50$ worth of Ethereum in your MetaMask wallet to spread around and reup. A complete crash is going to cost you 50$ and upto 3 months of the subscriptions. If you throw money at porn game developers for the potential of more of a game down the line, I think it's obvious you can live with some risk.

The risk is higher on the creator side if they depend on the income, but then again the risk of a patreon review is non negligible too and some games are a complete no go there.

PS. companies like Verotel and Chronopay don't have a reputation to lose, at least not in the sense of being associated with porn ... no matter how offensive. None of their customers would give a shit, the (ex-)criminals in charge certainly do not. If there was money to be made, they'd be making it.
 

PinkysBrain

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Jan 27, 2018
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Still, it's more realistic than finding a CC payment processor which won't drop you like a hot rock when they find out what you're facilitating outside of Japan (the only market in the world with drawn Loli&Bestiality openly for sale through CC, hopeful thinking won't change it).

Eliminate the impossible and take your picks of the improbable, Crypto or Japan. Or just accept the status quo ... rolling the dice on Patreon reviews and working around Patreon with off site DLC kinda works too. For now any way.
 

Beerie

New Member
Nov 19, 2017
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1
I've watched thousands of violent movies, TV-shows and games - Still not a murderer.
I've played rape games or games that feature rape in some extend - Still not a rapist.
I've even dabbled in loli - Still not a child molester.
I've encountered bestiality - I like dogs, but wouldn't have sex with one.
(...and never will be)
I coudn't agree more. I also love (for instance) incest in games but would never even think about that in real life. Another example: Japan has the most most extreme scenes in manga (lolicon, mutilation, bestiality, you name it) but the lowerst crime rate in the world. The problem is that this opinion is not everywhere shared by the legsilative powers.
 
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uradamus

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Jan 4, 2018
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Another issue with cryptocurrency is that it means rewarding those fuckwad cryptominers responsible for jacking up hardware prices and wasting insane amounts of power on a scale that rivals many small nations. I for one will never use crypto if I can avoid it.
 

megaplayboy10k

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Apr 16, 2018
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Maybe a proxy/middleman site concept? One site just advertises your project, and has a link to the proxy/middleman site. The middleman site allows payment of a modest sum for a purported item--a fan club subscription, say. The subscriptions are collected by the developer, who then emails the d/l link for content updates. Is this remotely workable?The middleman site hosts zero adult content, and the payments are simply for a "fan club subscription" of unspecified content. [lawyer's note: this is kinda like money laundering, except as far as I can tell there's nothing illegal about it]
 

smnb

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Sep 5, 2017
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It's not long-term solution. There was at least one site that did this for years with Paypal (and maybe still does, but it's no longer publicly visible as it was before). So "remotely workable", yes. But highly unpredictable, it can end any time, if the word gets out to wrong ears.
 

Yoshiiki

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Nov 10, 2017
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Maybe a proxy/middleman site concept? One site just advertises your project, and has a link to the proxy/middleman site. The middleman site allows payment of a modest sum for a purported item--a fan club subscription, say. The subscriptions are collected by the developer, who then emails the d/l link for content updates. Is this remotely workable?The middleman site hosts zero adult content, and the payments are simply for a "fan club subscription" of unspecified content. [lawyer's note: this is kinda like money laundering, except as far as I can tell there's nothing illegal about it]
Not that much different from patreon/paypal right now. Problem is with middleman not wanting to move money for such content. You need different middleman... Who?

You can forget about changing paypal's stance on the topic, not happening. Same can't be said about Patreon, they aren't big enough. However, they need to answer to paypal. We do now that both Visa and Mastercard don't have any issues with incest and such, otherwise MangaGamer and JastUSA wouldn't have those as payment methods. They have someone to process all that payment. So that's a possible route.
But, there is another issue. Patreon doesn't only host NSFW content, they have other things too. Just because they have another payment processing middleman that doesn't mind adult stuff it doesn't mean they can't be pressured by paypal. As long as Patreon works with PP, it won't be solved.

So being realistic about this:
- Alternative to patreon? Doubtful that most people will move somewhere for few content creators due to inconvenience. Same reason why YT alternative won't be a thing.

- Alternative payment processing for Patreon? While it could be possible to pressure Patreon with enough people, it's doubtful they would stop working with PP.

- Patreon fucking up hard enough and removing all NSFW content? Somewhat possible, but they already showed us it's an idea they don't want to do. The way they handled first adult stuff cleansing shows exactly that. No hard bans, rather asking to change/hide stuff. It means there is enough money involved it scares them (as for paypal, probably not a fuck given because it's a drop in the ocean).

What I am expecting on terms of "what if", would be Patreon trying to deal with NSFW, screwing up and backing out of their idea in same way they backed out of fee changes.
So if you are content creator, just don't give them [Patreon] a reason to look into your stuff, keep your main page clean. At the same point, have alternative methods for patreon, have proper communication with your supporters (keep e-mails, have discord, etc) so in case of fuckup, you can tell them where you are. Better to recover ~50% of people than none.
 

OhWee

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Just a quick update on Sponsorion. They have a Tumbler blog:


The jist from their May post says that they are still plugging away, and are not ready for prime time yet.