demicoeur
patreon
New Patreon TOS and Stream Postponement
🕑 Added 2024-08-13 09:26:22 +0000 UTCHello everyone!
Quickly before I get into the TOS changes, I've had yet another doctor's appointment land on my stream day, so I have to postpone this one until next week. Friday's stream will still go ahead as usual, but the next one will now fall on Wednesday the 21st at 2PM BST. Sorry about the constant moving things around! I've been in and out of the doctor's a lot trying to find the source of a reoccurring medical issue, and it's been a nightmare. I'm hoping to get an answer (and treatment) soon.
Onto the TOS changes:
I'm sure many of you have seen through other patreon accounts or social media that there's a new fee coming to Apple IOS users. Starting November, Apple wants Patreon to use their payment processors, which incur a 30% fee, or Patreon will be removed from the Apple store. Patreon's solution to this is to automatically increase payments of patrons using the IOS app by 30%.
I do NOT want that. I'd prefer to incur the fee myself rather than my patrons think I've forced a price increase on them. If you're an IOS user, I strongly suggest cancelling your membership and signing up via desktop to avoid the 30% charge.
On a personal note, I'm tired of the app stores and credit card processors both taking substantial fees from users and dictating what sort of content is or is not acceptable. There's been an increase in total account deletions from NSFW creators lately. The alternatives seem to be Subscribestar and OnlyFans, but I've been here for a long time, and I know from experience that platform hopping leaves a significant number of users behind. It's a lot of faff to ask of people who are already doing me a favour by subscribing here, so usually only 10-20% actually make the switch. It might give me a foothold elsewhere, but it won't replace what I've built here, and there's no guarantee that the next platform won't pull the same move once they get big/popular enough off an exodus. Perhaps it sounds defeatist, but I had to reduce the amount of perks I provided here after years of burnout, and I don't think I have it in me to increase that in order to attract a new userbase on a new platform, so I'm staying here for the time being.
For now, if you want to ensure you can find me in the event Patreon deletes my account, join the discord or follow me on furaffinity. I'll use those to inform people where I'll be posting or moving to.
Sorry for the downer of a post! I really wish these things didn't crop up all the time. I mostly ignore them and carry on, but since this affects your payments, I needed to make sure you're all informed. If you have any questions, let me know in the comments!
Comments
Demicoeur
Thank you! I appreciate the well wishes. I'm hoping it's all nothing to worry about and can be easily treated. Just frustrating trying to find a cause, and worrying when new symptoms crop up.
Demicoeur
I agree, and I think there should be a safe place for NSFW artwork! It's just strange that artwork of any kind gets this degree of censorship where it can just strip someone of their income. My work tends to be pretty softcore, but you never know what could happen and I just wanted to warn patrons so that, just in case the worst comes to pass, you know I didn't leave or delete it myself :(
Drizzle
Problem is that Patreon creators aren't employees. You basically have no legal protection on these kinds of platforms.
OR-69
I'm not sure. This is people's livelyhoods. If a creator hasn't broken any of the rules and Patreon unilatterally closes their account I would think they are opening themselves up to a Wrongful Termination lawsuit. It's no different from from a business firing a compentant and high-performing employee over their politics, or percieved LGBT status. Patreon is based in San Francisco and California has pretty decent employee protection laws. (Im not a lawyer, but maybe someone else here is?) I'd be willing to contribute to a GoFundMe to cover legal fees on a test case.
OR-69
I've already deleted the Patreon App from my iToys. I have bookmarks in Chrome that follow me across platforms, so its no big loss. Your work is great. Yes it's "NSFW" but it's a lovely story. There is nothing offensive or pornographic about it. This is your livelyhood. If they unilatterally close your account, I would think they are oppening themselves up for a Wrongful Termination lawsuit. But, that is a completely seperate issue from the new iOS fees bullshit. I can't imagine that Patreon is very happy about them either.
Drizzle
Yeah I'm definitely with you there. With all this Apple BS I didn't even mention the medical stuff! I hope you get answers soon and that it turns out ot be the best case scenario. Idk what else I can do except genuinely wishing you the best ❤
Drizzle
It's definitely worth a closer look, cause man, this is complicated... I think what I said is correct, but the switch to only subscription memberships is a bit confusing. I still think there will be no extra fee, since other subscriptions will be switched over internally and none of that will be handled by Apple's payment processing. They're just required to offer only subscriptions or the app will get banned from the app store (which is frankly unacceptable). Tbh, I didn't realise first-of-the-month and per-creation would be removed across Patreon as a whole. And people wonder why I hate Apple...
Demicoeur
Yeah, we're all very tired of it. The way purity culture has grown, I don't see this problem going away anytime soon. I'm just going to try and make the best of things however possible. Makes me sound like a grandpa, but I miss the old internet lol!
Demicoeur
So, Drizzle commented below that this change will only affect NEW memberships rather than existing ones. The language in the notification from Patreon implied otherwise, so I need to look into it. So long as you don't use Apple's payment processor then it shouldn't apply to you, even if you're using the patreon app from an iPhone!
Demicoeur
Oh this is interesting, it didn't sound like that when I first read over the change (By Nov 2025 they're talking about forcing all of us onto subscription billing, and I thought this meant the 30% increase would affect anyone using the Apple app) Thanks for clarifying, I'll look into this more in depth!
Drizzle
I think we're all tired of companies making these decisions affecting other platforms. In fact, Patreon itself runs foul of this, possibly banning you if you post banned content outiside the site. There have been threats about creators getting banned just because they have an Inkbunny account. Unfortunately, it's going to take legislation to change any of that. And there is none on the horizon. The powers that be aren't even aware of these issues.
Drizzle
Actually, I'm quite confident in saying it will never affect existing memberships. Because it's all about Apple forcing the use of their payment plarform, which has the fees. Trying to keep it short, I don't think even Apple would do this retroactively, even if it was legally allowed, which I don't think it is, because they would effectively be stealing subscriptions from other payment methods just because someone used the iOS app once...
Aero WolfDeer
so im using paypal as my payment method but im using it on an iphone, do you know if ill be affected by the price increase?
Drizzle
(edit: the FAQ is pretty clear on this. It's just new subscriptions.) For right now at least, the fees will not affect existing memberships. No need to cancel. It's a bit confusing since they talk about automatically switching creators to new subscription options, but that's only in terms of what you can offer people.
