Patreon alternatives due to censorship

[Wol]

I explain it as easily as I can: pedo stuff, that you introduced in the debate, is ILLEGAL, even the fake depictions, as far as I know (there was a debate, mind you, in my country about DRAGON BALL of all things). Or they are at least borderline and risky.
So, being illegal, I can understand everyone banning it.

The other fetishes might be strange, distasteful to some, but they are not illegal by any means (and, obviously, I'm still talking about the fake depictions).

So there is no reason to ban the other, LEGAL, depiction of fetishes. And indeed, more often than not, they seems to be not banned (I don't know what happened to pornhub particularly, still not the point).

I've read about credit card companies being burnt somehow and then, to return to my original question, I asked:

Because people tend to panic and claim fraud when someone finds out about their fetishes and the porn they're paying for, since refunds cost credit card companies even more money then their refunding. So they tend to charge porn sites more in order to use their services in order to cover potentials refunds.
In Patreon's case they managed to get a lower charge rate in order to maintain a better revenue split with creators, in exchange patreon had to make fetishes that have a decent chance of getting panic refunds or actual laws banning them against the TOS in order to maintain the favorable contract with credit card companies and paypal.

 

[UserX]

Yes, there is one reason, and the most powerful one: they just don't want to be linked with that kind of content. It's legal content, that doesn't mean they're forced to back it up offering their payment services if they don't want to. Public relationships/brand/corporate image thing, probably. Capital investors preferences, most definitely.

Which is a thing that I can understand (even, if, honestly, I think most of the people don't care about it), but it is not what has been said, afair.
The reason given was not: "Dudes, you're fucking pervert and no one wants to deal with you, go fuck off!", but "Credit card companies blah blah blah previous issues about transactions regarding porn blah blah blah economical risky blah blah blah"

(see below)

Because people tend to panic and claim fraud when someone finds out about their fetishes and the porn they're paying for, since refunds cost credit card companies even more money then their refunding. So they tend to charge porn sites more in order to use their services in order to cover potentials refunds.
In Patreon's case they managed to get a lower charge rate in order to maintain a better revenue split with creators, in exchange patreon had to make fetishes that have a decent chance of getting panic refunds or actual laws banning them against the TOS in order to maintain the favorable contract with credit card companies and paypal.

Which makes sense too, as long as someone is able to explain why vanilla and consensual (which includes, for example, BDSM in SSC version, which means a lot of fetishes) sex is less risky.

 

[HopesGaming]

I explain it as easily as I can: pedo stuff, that you introduced in the debate, is ILLEGAL, even the fake depictions, as far as I know (there was a debate, mind you, in my country about DRAGON BALL of all things). Or they are at least borderline and risky.
So, being illegal, I can understand everyone banning it.

The other fetishes might be strange, distasteful to some, but they are not illegal by any means (and, obviously, I'm still talking about the fake depictions).

So there is no reason to ban the other, LEGAL, depiction of fetishes. And indeed, more often than not, they seems to be not banned (I don't know what happened to pornhub particularly, still not the point).

I've read about credit card companies being burnt somehow and then, to return to my original question, I asked:

Why are you talking like the whole world is operating under one unified law?
In some countries, incest is illegal while in others it is not. In some countries, lolis (pedo stuff) are illegal while in others it is not.
That is why we only talking about the ones that are considered extremes/bad and the one that is in the TOS in the different sites that fight these extreme fetishes.

Pedo stuff like loli is considered bad because it's sexualizing young children.
Rape stuff is considered bad because of its glorification of rape.
Mind control is considered bad because of no consent.

Why is it so hard for you to understand that these are high-risk fetishes that they not only want to distant themselves from but also a very high risk to their business.

Normal sex scenes is not considered 'bad' as it does not glorify things that normal human being see as morally wrong. (such as rape)

 

[Wol]

Which is a thing that I can understand (even, if, honestly, I think most of the people don't care about it), but it is not what has been said, afair.
The reason given was not: "Dudes, you're fucking pervert and no one wants to deal with you, go fuck off!", but "Credit card companies blah blah blah previous issues about transactions regarding porn blah blah blah economical risky blah blah blah"

(see below)




Which makes sense too, as long as someone is able to explain why vanilla and consensual (which includes, for example, BDSM in SSC version, which means a lot of fetishes) sex is less risky.

Essentially it's all degrees of risk in this case, thing is Porn has an extremely high rate of fraud claim and refunds no matter what it's fetish is, so to mitigate that it's charged higher as a rule. It's less that the companies are being Puritanian (except for Paypal) and more that they're trying to prevent financial loss that comes with an inherently risky business( ex. porn)

 

[moskyx]

Which is a thing that I can understand (even, if, honestly, I think most of the people don't care about it), but it is not what has been said, afair.
The reason given was not: "Dudes, you're fucking pervert and no one wants to deal with you, go fuck off!", but "Credit card companies blah blah blah previous issues about transactions regarding porn blah blah blah economical risky blah blah blah"

(see below)


Which makes sense too, as long as someone is able to explain why vanilla and consensual (which includes, for example, BDSM in SSC version, which means a lot of fetishes) sex is less risky.

Well, this is a wild guess but I think niche fetishes are prone to attract shady business. If your potential market is small, you might be tempted to increase your benefits by scamming some pervs (sometimes you might even think those pervs need to be scammed as a punishment for their deviant tastes). Plus as the other guy said before, it's an easy call when your beloved ones surprise you paying for that morally reprobable stuff (it can happen with mainstream porn but to a less extent). Also, there's the risk that a nice quiet site for extreme but only fictional content could attract the attention of people looking for and posting the real stuff, and you as a well established company don't want to be caught in the middle of it.

 

[recreation]

First of all I want to mention that loli is not = pedo, no matter what you think about it. Loli is not even = loli, it's a collective term with several meanings, including adult girls and non-sexual stuff. Saying loli = pedo is like saying porn game player are potential rapists.

@ topic:
It has been mentioned several times already, but some people don't seem to get it: Patreon doesn't censor anything, they're just playing by the rules of their payment processors.
Sure, they could say fuck paypal, but what makes patreon unique and leader on the market? Exactly, it's paypal. If it wouldn't be for paypal, a lot of people would've already switched over to other sites like subscribestar.
Also, a lot of people seem to forget that every single person that got banned over the years has knowingly and willingly broken patreons TOS, so there is absolutely no point in blaming patreon for that.

Some of us back devs on Patreon because we can use things like Mastercard and PayPal, the things we've been using for online payments for years now.

Subscribestar accepts credit cards afaik, same goes for itch.io (which isn't really an alternative for patreon, but I wanted to mention it anyway since a lot of devs use it).

 

[DbatRT]

The Patreon guidelines on adult content, in full:

Offensive and graphic creations:
We understand that artists sometimes have to push boundaries to create thought provoking art so we don't review offensive and graphic creations with strict black and white guidelines, instead we review them in the context of the whole creator page.
However, we have zero tolerance when it comes to the glorification of sexual violence which includes bestiality, rape, and child exploitation (i.e., sexualized depiction of minors). This is true for illustrated, animated, or any other type of creations. Patreon reserves the right to review and remove accounts that may violate this guideline.

We also do not allow other fringe sexual fetish creations, such as incest, necrophilia, or fetish creations that is hard to distinguish from non-consensual sex.

We understand that some topics on this list such as incest or rape are a little bit more complicated because these situations are, unfortunately, part of real life. As a result, when reviewing these types of creations, the Trust and Safety team will take into consideration context including personal, historical or educational narrative. For example, survivor stories or fiction such as Game of Thrones or Lolita are allowed on Patreon.
_____________________________

So, what does that cover?
1. Rape--well, anything where it's fairly obviously sexual assault
2. Bestiality--animals can't consent
3. CP(any sex with minors, or to be really permissive/stretch things, obviously prepubescent children)
4. Incest(because implied nonconsensual or questionable consent, I guess)
5. Necrophilia--nonconsensual
6. Mind control fetish would be nonconsensual as well

The lack of consent or apparent lack of consent or capacity to consent is the key here. Now, I'm a fan of mind control games, and believe that digital art depictions of something which doesn't exist in real life are basically harmless. Nobody's going to be inspired to try to "mind control" people in real life. Similarly, I think most depictions of incest in games are about as far from realistic as possible, and that, for the most part, consensual relationships are depicted, as opposed to relationships based upon force, coercion, or blackmail(though games with those do admittedly exist).
To me, the biggest, most obvious "red flags" that Patreon is looking out for are any sexual depictions of children(absolute death for a commercial site) and/or any depictions of nonconsensual sexual activity.

I guess my point is, it's perfectly reasonable to quibble with the Patreon restrictions, but at the same time those guidelines are pretty understandable and defensible from a business standpoint. "Why can't I publish my loli incest mind control game on Patreon?" seems like a self-answering question.

This doesn't work, there is a game called Perverted Education that has:
3. CP(any sex with minors, or to be really permissive/stretch things, obviously prepubescent children)
4. Incest(because implied nonconsensual or questionable consent, I guess)
6. Mind control fetish would be nonconsensual as well
And everything is fine with it.
Or is there such a game: The Company, it is also OK despite having:
1. Rape--well, anything where it's fairly obviously sexual assault
2. Bestiality--animals can't consent
4. Incest(because implied nonconsensual or questionable consent, I guess)
6. Mind control fetish would be nonconsensual as well
Moreover, as far as I remember, someone even made a report on these games, and nothing has changed, and these are only the most obvious examples, and the topic of incest, rape, is present in many games.

 

[Wol]

This doesn't work, there is a game called Perverted Education that has:
3. CP(any sex with minors, or to be really permissive/stretch things, obviously prepubescent children)
4. Incest(because implied nonconsensual or questionable consent, I guess)
6. Mind control fetish would be nonconsensual as well
And everything is fine with it.
Or is there such a game: The Company, it is also OK despite having:
1. Rape--well, anything where it's fairly obviously sexual assault
2. Bestiality--animals can't consent
4. Incest(because implied nonconsensual or questionable consent, I guess)
6. Mind control fetish would be nonconsensual as well
Moreover, as far as I remember, someone even made a report on these games, and nothing has changed, and these are only the most obvious examples, and the topic of incest, rape, is present in many games.

This is because, as has been stated continuously, Patreon will ignore games as long as the violations aren't blatant. hell I literally named 7 games and developers that all had content that violated the TOS in one way or another and never got taken down. The main difference between the developers And the "Political Commentators" is that in the case of the commentators? It's impossible for Patreon to maintain ANY deniability due to their entire shtick beign to vocally comment on issues. That makes it almost impossible for them to NOT violate the TOS in some way or form.

 

[megaplayboy10k]

This doesn't work, there is a game called Perverted Education that has:
3. CP(any sex with minors, or to be really permissive/stretch things, obviously prepubescent children)
4. Incest(because implied nonconsensual or questionable consent, I guess)
6. Mind control fetish would be nonconsensual as well
And everything is fine with it.
Or is there such a game: The Company, it is also OK despite having:
1. Rape--well, anything where it's fairly obviously sexual assault
2. Bestiality--animals can't consent
4. Incest(because implied nonconsensual or questionable consent, I guess)
6. Mind control fetish would be nonconsensual as well
Moreover, as far as I remember, someone even made a report on these games, and nothing has changed, and these are only the most obvious examples, and the topic of incest, rape, is present in many games.

But if the rules aren't even consistently, persistently enforced, why is there a clamor for jumping platforms? The urgency escapes me.

 

[Wol]

But if the rules aren't even consistently, persistently enforced, why is there a clamor for jumping platforms? The urgency escapes me.

Honestly? I think the clamour is less over Devs being banned and more over people affiliated wit hthe alt-right being banned.

 

[Avaron1974]

But if the rules aren't even consistently, persistently enforced, why is there a clamor for jumping platforms? The urgency escapes me.

The clamor comes from a number of groups of people but mainly those that have no fucking idea how anything works.

You'll see idiots keep bringing up devs not leaving Patreon because they want money and yes, that is exactly the reason ..... because people need money to live.

No matter how many alternatives appear none will ever compare to Patreon for sheer amount of people it reaches and that's all down to payment methods.

General rule of the internet is you are never the only one and I use PayPal for all my online dealings. I used to use a credit card until a company charged us twice and it took going to my banks fraud department, 7 months of investigating and a lot of stress before we got that money back. Any problems I have with payments with PayPal are resolved with 2 or 3 clicks and usually within 5 working days.

Following the general rule there are other people that will only use PayPal online which instantly rules out Subscribestar.

There are devs that have tried to switch over but aren't getting the subscriber numbers to make it worth it.

Someone mentioned Sevin earlier here. Him and Fenexo make just over or around 30k a month on Patreon yet only manage 1k a month on Subscribestar. Why would they drop 30k a month just to please a few idiots on here that don't know how life works yet?

That would be fucking insanity.

If some halfwit said to me that I should give up 30k a month to move to another platform I wouldn't need to type LOL because no matter where they live in the world they would be able to hear me laughing at them.

Some devs only make around 1k a month on Patreon.

If they only make 1k on the worlds biggest platform then they will probably make between absolutely nothing and a couple of hundred anywhere else.

Games would be abandoned in much higher number than they are now because it just wouldn't be worth it.

 

[おい！]

The clamor comes from a number of groups of people but mainly those that have no fucking idea how anything works.

You'll see idiots keep bringing up devs not leaving Patreon because they want money and yes, that is exactly the reason ..... because people need money to live.

No matter how many alternatives appear none will ever compare to Patreon for sheer amount of people it reaches and that's all down to payment methods.

General rule of the internet is you are never the only one and I use PayPal for all my online dealings. I used to use a credit card until a company charged us twice and it took going to my banks fraud department, 7 months of investigating and a lot of stress before we got that money back. Any problems I have with payments with PayPal are resolved with 2 or 3 clicks and usually within 5 working days.

Following the general rule there are other people that will only use PayPal online which instantly rules out Subscribestar.

There are devs that have tried to switch over but aren't getting the subscriber numbers to make it worth it.

Someone mentioned Sevin earlier here. Him and Fenexo make just over or around 30k a month on Patreon yet only manage 1k a month on Subscribestar. Why would they drop 30k a month just to please a few idiots on here that don't know how life works yet?

That would be fucking insanity.

If some halfwit said to me that I should give up 30k a month to move to another platform I wouldn't need to type LOL because no matter where they live in the world they would be able to hear me laughing at them.

Some devs only make around 1k a month on Patreon.

If they only make 1k on the worlds biggest platform then they will probably make between absolutely nothing and a couple of hundred anywhere else.

Games would be abandoned in much higher number than they are now because it just wouldn't be worth it.

You have made valid points, but your biggest mistake is trying to convey your message to morons. As you know this is not the first thread on this subject nor will it sadly be the last. You will always find a moron who would rather start a new thread on this subject, than make a post in one of the other Patreon threads on here. Then the shit stirrers start posting, because they have nothing better to do. Don't worry though there will soon be another moron creating yet another thread on this subject.

 

[Joshua Tree]

Exactly my point. Until Patrons start to switch over, developers will not switch over. So if you are subscribed on Patreon to a developer that offers SubscribeStar or other alternative, you should swap your subscription over. Sadly, there is no real alternative for Patreon if your game is your primary income.

Big reason why people want to use Patreon is PayPal. Not everyone want to dish out their CC details over the net. And big reason why Patreon got the rules they do, is just because PayPal...

 

[DbatRT]

This is because, as has been stated continuously, Patreon will ignore games as long as the violations aren't blatant.

Wait, did I miss something? What does violations blatant mean?

But if the rules aren't even consistently, persistently enforced, why is there a clamor for jumping platforms? The urgency escapes me.

Because they do not destroy all games (but this is still the case), but still do it sometimes, these are demonstrative executions, which demonstrate that they are "fighting" evil. They kicked out Lilith-throne, although they have a clear text without any images, but they do not kick out games listed vyshchi, where there are obvious images, such as an animated picture with bestiality.

Big reason why people want to use Patreon is PayPal. Not everyone want to dish out their CC details over the net. And big reason why Patreon got the rules they do, is just because PayPal...

Read this:

You must be registered to see the links

 

[Wol]

Wait, did I miss something? What does violations blatant mean?

Because they do not destroy all games (but this is still the case), but still do it sometimes, these are demonstrative executions, which demonstrate that they are "fighting" evil. They kicked out Lilith-throne, although they have a clear text without any images, but they do not kick out games listed vyshchi, where there are obvious images, such as an animated picture with bestiality.

Read this:

You must be registered to see the links

In the case of Weg Developers it means that they, A) Don't list any of the game/vns fetishes on patreon posts, b) avoid posting images that violate the TOS, and C) And this is exclusive to Incest devs mind, don't use a title that's a blatant pun on incest like an idiot. And even then I personally can't think of any devs actually getting banned from the platform, and I've been here for almost 4 years.

 

[seyfer110]

In the case of Weg Developers it means that they, A) Don't list any of the game/vns fetishes on patreon posts, b) avoid posting images that violate the TOS, and C) And this is exclusive to Incest devs mind, don't use a title that's a blatant pun on incest like an idiot. And even then I personally can't think of any devs actually getting banned from the platform, and I've been here for almost 4 years.

It also depends on reports, and obviously on how much of a puritan the one from the "trust and safety" team who review the page's content is.
Some consider furry as pure bestiality, for example, so for them even creature like were-wolf, centaurs and other fantasy creatures are off-limits...

 

[WeirdWorld]

So say I release a version of a game that doesn't break any of patreons rules. But then some other unnamed individual releases a patch that unlocks some rule breaking content within the game. Can patreon do anything to me?

 

[anne O'nymous]

So say I release a version of a game that doesn't break any of patreons rules. But then some other unnamed individual releases a patch that unlocks some rule breaking content within the game. Can patreon do anything to me?

As long as it's effectively an unnamed individual that isn't related to the game, they can, and will, do nothing against you.

But I insist on the "unnamed individual that isn't related to the game". If they discover that this person is you under disguise, the brother of the coder, or the cat of the community manager, it will become something totally different.

 

[WeirdWorld]

As long as it's effectively an unnamed individual that isn't related to the game, they can, and will, do nothing against you.

But I insist on the "unnamed individual that isn't related to the game". If they discover that this person is you under disguise, the brother of the coder, or the cat of the community manager, it will become something totally different.

What happens if they do find out? Can they do anything other than ban me?

 

[anne O'nymous]

What happens if they do find out? Can they do anything other than ban me?

They just have the power to ban you. You goes against their Terms of Service, what is enough to break the contract they had with you, but that's all. I doubt that there's a country that classified "breaking the terms of a service contract" as criminal.

But don't forget that then you'll have to rebuild all of your support. Everyone of your patrons previous to the ban will have to find you again, and accept to follow you to the place you now are. Unless it happen really early, it will take months, perhaps years, before you return back to the level of support you had before the ban.