Many artists on my Twitter feed are feeling cautiously relieved right now: Patreon has decided to not roll out planned changes to their billing system, after all. For those who don’t remember, Patreon had decided to — somewhat out of the blue — change it so that creators were no longer paying processing fees for transactions. Instead, those transactions would be charged to backers directly, and in a way that de-incentivized $1 monthly pledges. Cue anger, frustration, canceled pledges, confusion, and delay*. So now Patreon is canceling the planned switch and will now do something else to solve the issues that they apparently were hoping to fix with this switch.
Interestingly, if they had simply done this as an opt-in option:
Your current pledge option is $1 per month. Under this option transaction fees are paid by the creator. Would you like to opt-in for paying the transaction fees yourself, allowing the creator to keep more money? Under that option you will be paying $1.38 per month.
…I think that they would have gotten a reasonable number of people out there who would have shrugged and said “Sure. I can afford it.” And if they didn’t; no harm, no foul. It’s harder to get upset over something like this when it’s just an option.
My two cents.
Moe Lane
PS: Halfway through the month, and there’s a story coming up!
*It didn’t have much effect on my Patreon, but I was on tenderhooks there for a bit.
Patreon’s move is idiotic as many of the online creators have start looking for alternative source such as MakerSupport.