Patreon Reverses Disastrous Decision Which Harmed RPG Creators

Last week, Patreon - a service used by a lot of RPG creators - announced a policy change out of the blue. They emailed creators and patrons alike, unilaterally telling them that they were essentially passing some costs on to the patrons, and thus increasing the amount of their pledges. Creators - including us here at EN World - watched in horror as our hard-won patron bases, which we've built up over months and years, cancelled their pledges; and we could hardly blame them. Fortunately, the outcry was heard - Patreon is NOT implementing that disastrous change!

Last week, Patreon - a service used by a lot of RPG creators - announced a policy change out of the blue. They emailed creators and patrons alike, unilaterally telling them that they were essentially passing some costs on to the patrons, and thus increasing the amount of their pledges. Creators - including us here at EN World - watched in horror as our hard-won patron bases, which we've built up over months and years, cancelled their pledges; and we could hardly blame them. Fortunately, the outcry was heard - Patreon is NOT implementing that disastrous change!


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As you may know, EN World runs four Patreon campaigns, all of which were hit by Patreon's recent actions. As a result, the site has lost a signifiant amount of monthly revenue, and has been forced to cut back on freelancers, columnists, and more. It was quite a blow, and we are hardly alone - all across the RPG community (and many other industries), the same thing happened.

We're really pleased that Patreon has changed its mind. But those lost patrons are still gone. For that reason, this is a plea - if you unsubscribed from a Patreon - any Patreon - because of the recent actions, please consider re-subscribing. Every little counts, and lots of people have been impacted badly by this. In the coming week, I intend to highlight some awesome RPG Patreons to help as many as possible get back on their feet. Hopefully that will help a little. Creators have no way to contact those patrons who left, so all we can do is put the word out.

In the meantime, here are EN World's four Patreons. If you unsubscribed, please, please consider resubscribing. These things affect so many freelancers in our community, as well as the day to day running of communities like EN World. These below can be subscribed to for as little as a single dollar (and you get all the back-catalogue too!)

  • EN5ider. This is our biggest Patreon, and serves 5th Edition players with rules, adventures, and more. It's also how we publish the 5E version of our ZEITGEIST adventure path. If you remember A Touch of Class, our book of new classes for 5E, that came from this Patreon.
  • TRAILseeker. This Patreon serves Pathfinder. It's similar to EN5ider, and includes rules articles, adventures, and so on. We were also considering spinning out a Starfinder Patreon until last week, and we'd still love to do that.
  • EONS. This one is for WOIN fans. Tons of rules articles, adventures, races, careers, and so on. Essential if you play WOIN.
  • EN World. This one is for our news columns. It's just a monthly pledge - you don't directly get anything for it - but it's a way to support our freelancer program and all the columnists we use.
Are you an RPG creator on Patreon, or a patron of one? Let us know!
It's not all about us! If you know of (or run) an RPG Patreon affected by this, please post it with a link in the comments. We'll gather all of these and do a big article highlighting as many as we can next week in the hope that we can do a little good.
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RichGreen

Adventurer
Glad to see this stupid decision has been reversed, and hope you go ahead with the Starfinder Patreon - I'd be jolly interested in that one :)
 

Truly a dumb move by Patreon in the first place. Yes, they’ve reversed their decision, but the damage has still been done. It wouldn’t surprise me if several creators start looking at moving to a platform that they have full control over, something they might not have done if Patreon didn’t make this horrible change.
 

Morrus

Well, that was fun
Staff member
Truly a dumb move by Patreon in the first place. Yes, they’ve reversed their decision, but the damage has still been done. It wouldn’t surprise me if several creators start looking at moving to a platform that they have full control over, something they might not have done if Patreon didn’t make this horrible change.

It’s still the only major player in town right now, but I’m sure lots of RPG creators are keeping a close eye on the upcoming Drip from Kickstarter.
 

faete

Explorer
I know ERFWorld uses their own system, so its definitely possible. I'm just not sure how cost effective it would be for some of the smaller creators.
 

Cringer_luvr

First Post
Once again greed nearly or possibly has already destroyed something great. When will these companies learn that people are sick and tired of being nickeled and dimed to death!
 

DM Howard

Explorer
Glad to hear that they changed their minds. I couldn't really wrap my head around their proposed changes anyway, the graphs made no sense to me.
 

It’s still the only major player in town right now, but I’m sure lots of RPG creators are keeping a close eye on the upcoming Drip from Kickstarter.

I'm sure Kickstarter will be doing everything they can to get Drip out to market as soon as possible. They would be super happy that Patreon has given them a nice boost without them even doing anything.

Even if it takes them a few months, I see a number of creators moving away from Patreon as soon as they can. Some bigger creators may even look to moving to their own platform if it is cost-effective.
 

Craig Page

Villager
I'm a fiction writer and game designer/runner. My patreon (https://www.patreon.com/CraigPage) focuses on my fiction, but I often talk about gaming throughout. I even have a novel I'm posting on it (called Bleed) that focuses on roleplayers' lives in and out of game. I just started my Patreon a few months ago, this new plan would have torpedoed me. I'm glad they backed themselves up, but am looking forward to seeing the up and coming competition.
 

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