Alternatives to Patreon - Maybe for Adult games

[PixelRepublic]

Devs I know i can name Ptolemy, Dark Silver bigtime. Mr. Dots most of it was dropping the incest content.

Ptolemys dip can be acuated to the fact that he finished Dreaming of Dana, and people haven't been on board with his newer creations (like myself - and I was a big fan and supporter).

Again, Dark Silver. People were not happy with his new game at all, for a variety of reasons. Also, some people were pissed that he gained his fame with Big Brother, and then just abandoned it (unlike with DMD which was in the same boat, which will continue privatly).

Two cases out of hundreds, easily explained when you know the industry.

 

[PixelRepublic]

I personally don't hate the fact that you're fighting for an alternative to Patreon. That's an awesome task. But again (and again), research. If you're going to take on a fight, know what you're fighting for and against. If you don't, you'll fail all the time.

One of the first things you should do when you're starting a company (and writing a business plan) is market research. If you don't, how are you supposed to know the market you're entering, what's needed or missing, what your competitors are doing (or not, or wrong), what your potential customers want or are missing. It's basic stuff.

Taking two cases out of hundreds and calling it the end of the world isn't good.

 

[Sam]

The main issue with an alternative is generating trust.

Trying to get creators to trust YOU with their entire livelihood is a massive task and not one that is easily solvable. This is why the current alternatives aren't viable - creators aren't going to trust a random dude on F95 with their livelihood, and I don't blame them, I certainly wouldn't.

 

[PixelRepublic]

The main issue with an alternative is generating trust.

Trying to get creators to trust YOU with their entire livelihood is a massive task and not one that is easily solvable. This is why the current alternatives aren't viable - creators aren't going to trust a random dude on F95 with their livelihood, and I don't blame them, I certainly wouldn't.

Yeah, I've been reading the original thread you merged this convo into initially. And while some of the projects mentioned seemed cool, and those developing them seemed to be competent, I didn't feel that I could trust them. Some of their decisions I was really scratching my head at.

Again, I get back to my original points. I personally know that I could develop a website that could perform the required functions. But I couldn't make it a success, least not on my own.

Honestly I think the way forward if for developers to take their funding system in-house - and it's not difficult for them to do. That way they have full control over their financial security. However, of course, that does remove the user base of sites like Patreon, and put promotion 100% in their hands. It's a trade off.

So either stick with Patreon, risk the future. Or go your own way, and have a slower start. Or third option, go your own way, and give your games fully free to F95 to gain fans (it's gona happen anyway) .

 

[gamersglory]

Yeah, I've been reading the original thread you merged this convo into initially. And while some of the projects mentioned seemed cool, and those developing them seemed to be competent, I didn't feel that I could trust them. Some of their decisions I was really scratching my head at.

Again, I get back to my original points. I personally know that I could develop a website that could perform the required functions. But I couldn't make it a success, least not on my own.

Honestly I think the way forward if for developers to take their funding system in-house - and it's not difficult for them to do. That way they have full control over their financial security. However, of course, that does remove the user base of sites like Patreon, and put promotion 100% in their hands. It's a trade off.

So either stick with Patreon, risk the future. Or go your own way, and have a slower start. Or third option, go your own way, and give your games fully free to F95 to gain fans (it's gona happen anyway) .

In-house funding is not very practical for the reason that adult products are High risk to banks and Credit card companies
You can not get payment through run of the mill payment processors you also have to account for chargebacks and their high fees.

Give away the games I'm sorry have you talked to a lot of devs. Some of them do this for a living and from my own experiences working with Ptolemy on his games. There is to much work to do for updates and content to do it for free. Some devs are ok with just making enough to get by but most i know are in it to make money GPU's to render with don't grow on trees. @PixelPlays when you have been on a team making a game get back to me you have done no research other than looking for free downloads. I'm passionate about making my platform happen. I am trusted in the dev community and that's all the trust I need.

 

[Sam]

In-house funding is not very practical for the reason that adult products are High risk to banks and Credit card companies
You can not get payment through run of the mill payment processors you also have to account for chargebacks and their high fees.

You don't need external funding to use a high risk processor. The development work involved wouldn't be too bad, the main issue is sorting out the legal and accountancy side; however if you believe in the project you could bootstrap it.

Give away the games I'm sorry have you talked to a lot of devs. Some of them do this for a living and from my own experiences working with Ptolemy on his games. There is to much work to do for updates and content to do it for free.

I think it was pretty clear he was joking.

when you have been on a team making a game get back to me you have done no research

Nobody in their right mind is going to leave Patreon whilst it's still up and online for adult creators to risk joining a random site. Not only has the creator got to trust the operator, but they're putting their name and reputation on the line. If the site goes down or is a scam not only do they have to start their funding from scratch, but their reputation would be tarnished.

As I've shown, the great patron exodus from Patreon isn't a thing. Some creator's revenue have dropped, but clearly that's down to other reasons. Just because a certain project or creator is losing money doesn't mean they're blameless and it's the platform's fault.

 

[Yoshiiki]

Most patreon pages I see are just short description of the game with a bunch of posts behind a paywall. The patreon really isn't a promotion page. The forums do all of the promoting and people just click a direct link to the place where they can pay for it.
i don't see why another site wouldn't work the same way, as long as the system itself is stable and trustworthy. The most important thing is simply to have a mechanism to move funds conveniently.

You completely missed my point which was said in few next sentences. How?
You need a lot of promotion te be as known as patreon, because you need a big userbase for it to work. No one is talking about promoting content creator.
Just like when you want to make videos and upload on the web, you go to youtube, even though alternatives are out there. You go where a lot of people are, there aren't many people on alternatives for patreon.

Anyway, there is a really fast route to make random adult patreon alternative a valuable thing, random, because you can't be certain where people will go. It's not actually that hard, you may only need around 15 people to pull it off. Only issue with that is, it will hit financially every single NSFW content creator. And because I think that patreon is playing games with paypal for now, so they don't hurt adult projects as much, because it still brings them money, I don't think it's worth it.

 

[gamersglory]

Patreon does very little to no promotion. The only thing that makes them unique is the subscription style payments. But that is easy to implement. Paypal is in a spot now the Ebay is breaking up with them

 

[gunderson]

While I think it'll be slow going to get started, a good alternative to Patreon would really help everybody out in this space. Would be nice to see Patreon get nervous that its repressive policies on content will cost them money.

The trouble is that you probably need a business model that at least looks from the outside like it isn't ONLY porn, otherwise you're likely to spook the relatively conservative payment processors.

Hope it works though. Monopolies are always bad for the consumer.

 

[Yoshiiki]

Patreon does very little to no promotion. The only thing that makes them unique is the subscription style payments. But that is easy to implement. Paypal is in a spot now the Ebay is breaking up with them

Because they don't have to. Train they rode to get where they are was based on different phenomena that's based more on being lucky at the right time than anything else.
At this very point you can create alternative that is better than patreon, you still won't grab their userbase. That's not how all of this work. Explain to me, how do you expect to move all people that support their content creators? Just moving creators and hoping at least 50% of their supporters will also move is quite delusional.

 

[kingofbrocoli]

One thing we have to remember is that patreon like ubisoft does not seem to be run by humans.Remember when they wanted to forbid 1$ pledges? They thought it was a good idea but It was the uproar of the community that made them backpedal like there was no tomorrow. One day they will fuck up and an alternative being up at the right time may snatch their user base.

 

[DSSAlex]

Well, that's going to be Drip because Kickstarter is way less stupid than Patreon. Doesn't help too much with adult games, tho.

 

[gamersglory]

While I think it'll be slow going to get started, a good alternative to Patreon would really help everybody out in this space. Would be nice to see Patreon get nervous that its repressive policies on content will cost them money.

The trouble is that you probably need a business model that at least looks from the outside like it isn't ONLY porn, otherwise you're likely to spook the relatively conservative payment processors.

Hope it works though. Monopolies are always bad for the consumer.

It's artistic expression and Just as valid as any other means of telling a story in video games

 

[Yoshiiki]

It's artistic expression and Just as valid as any other means of telling a story in video games

I know that, you know that, some people know it... Rest of the world and also majority? Doesn't give a single fuck, for them porn is porn and not artistic expression and that's more than 99.99%

I don't know, while I want patreon alternative and see some great ideas, none of those takes into account aspects other than technical. People most of the time don't care about many things they seem to care. Patreon has more than porn and if not for that, there wouldn't be as many people.
Forcing people to use extra platform to support something specific will only make it annoying for them as it takes away their convenience of having many types of creators in one place. Even if we assume patreon starts proper purge and remove all NSFW while good and known platform is there, content creators will only get back 50-60% of what they had. Maybe at one point they will get back to 100%, but it will be a very, very long process.
Would be safer to create same service as patreon, covering many types of project, not only adult and then hope for patreon to fuck up really badly, which shouldn't happen during Q2 and Q3 of this year. Maybe something during last quarter of this year and 2019 and that's assuming it even happens...

 

[HiEv]

FYI -

"US Hits Crypto Buying Service Payza With Money Laundering Lawsuit"

Mar 21, 2018 - Digital payment processor Payza has been charged by the U.S. government with running an unlicensed money services business.

One of the founders of the firm, Ferhan Patel, has been arrested, while his brother, co-founder Firoz Patel, remains at large.

...see the rest of the article

You must be registered to see the links

. They were indicted by a federal grand jury on March 22nd for being an unlicensed money service business (

You must be registered to see the links

).

I'm guessing this is going to be a bit of a problem for AdultPledge.

 

[Yoshiiki]

Well, they wanted to drop out from using payza, so it's just sooner than later.

 

[knerre]

On Tuesday, the Department of Justice unveiled the charges and accused the Patels and Pazya of facilitating as much as $250 million in money laundering on behalf of Ponzi schemes and child pornography sites, among other enterprises.

Jezus. And that's been going on from 2012 and onwards.

You must be registered to see the links

and they have changed domain names, so it seems they have fled to Europe, or something? It all looks so very legit...

 

[HiEv]

You must be registered to see the links

and they have changed domain names, so it seems they have fled to Europe, or something? It all looks so very legit...

Payza has its headquarters in London, so technically they were already in Europe. They also use(d) an acquiring bank (a place that allows merchants to accept credit card payments) located in Moscow. (

You must be registered to see the links

) Make of that what you will.

 

[OhWee]

A few random thoughts...

So, what about using a service that uses Stripe?

You must be registered to see the links

Those fees don't look too horrible to me. And it looks like it might be 'Vanilla Visa' (anonymous CC) friendly.

---

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...

You must be registered to see the links

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 being said, Buy Me A Coffee seems like the easiest way to avoid having to answer questions about your content. Of course, then there isn't an easy way to make sure that the patrons that you want to deliver certain content to get it without delivering it to others that might be offended, but at least it allows one time payments.

----

There's been no visible progress on the

You must be registered to see the links

front... that site essentially hasn't changed since the 'coming soon' splash page was first posted several months ago.

You must be registered to see the links

 

[thanatos69]

A few random thoughts...

So, what about using a service that uses Stripe?

You must be registered to see the links

Those fees don't look too horrible to me. And it looks like it might be 'Vanilla Visa' (anonymous CC) friendly.

---

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...

You must be registered to see the links

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 being said, Buy Me A Coffee seems like the easiest way to avoid having to answer questions about your content. Of course, then there isn't an easy way to make sure that the patrons that you want to deliver certain content to get it without delivering it to others that might be offended, but at least it allows one time payments.

----

There's been no visible progress on the

You must be registered to see the links

front... that site essentially hasn't changed since the 'coming soon' splash page was first posted several months ago.

You must be registered to see the links

It's been more than 6 months since Patreon started banning incest content. None viable alternative has come out yet. Makersupport shot themselves in the foot by censoring adult content at the beginning without having a big audience yet. I doubt they will make it to the next year.

Adultpledge sucks and with the Payza fiasco, I doubt they will survive the year either.

As for Sponsorion, check this out:

You must be registered to see the links

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.