Patreon Snafu Loses 20-25% of Projects' August Payments

[HiEv]

Looks like Patreon screwed up again. Most projects on Patreon are currently seeing 20-25% drops in pledges this month due to declined payments.

Patreon tweeted this:

Hi everyone, as you know we're noticing an unexpectedly high number of payment declines. We're sorry for the frustration this has caused and we're doing all we can to help creators get paid by working with our payment partners and continuing to retry payments. More info below.

You must be registered to see the links

(apologies for the width; click image for tweet link)

They followed that up with this:

this help article shows how your patrons can update their payment method:
"

You must be registered to see the links

"

Then this:

we will continue to keep retrying any declined payments, more info about that here:
"

You must be registered to see the links

"

Then this:

we're sending an email out to patrons whose payments were declined with an update about this situation, what they can do, and our sincere apology for all of this.

Unfortunately, some patrons have actually had their cards locked due to "somewhat increased and unusual activity". Others have been told that "prepaid cards are not allowed to be used as a payment method" now. And other patrons in the US who have contacted their bank have been told it was declined because it was an "out-of-country" charge.

There is a lot of speculation that Patreon's payment processor had been moved to the UK, hence the mess, but I haven't seen anything to confirm that for certain.

So, at this point I'd say just wait 24 hours and see if any new information comes out before acting. Hopefully things will be a bit better sorted out by then.

UPDATE: From the reports I've been hearing it's gone from around 20-25% lost payments, down to around 10-15% lost payments and dropping. Still above the ~5%(? I have less data here) or so norm, but not as bad.

That said, some people have patrons who can't get any of their cards to work, while others have patrons who've dropped support due to Patreon locking up their credit cards.

Still a pretty ugly mess. :disappointed:

 

[HopesGaming]

Just my luck. Barely been on patreon for a week and already technical issues. This is a bummer, especially for new creators.

 

[Nightcrawler]

Others have been told that "prepaid cards are not allowed to be used as a payment method" now.

That i can understand , As prepaid cards can be applied for and used by minors

 

[DarthSeduction]

That i can understand , As prepaid cards can be applied for and used by minors

And? Patreon already hides adult content from its search engine. Minors should be allowed, if they want to, to use the money that they've earned through allowance or whatever, to support whatever youtuber they want. They can't find our stuff unless they find this site or similar, and if they find this site, it's not Patreon's fault, its their parent's for not monitoring their children's internet use. Also, minors can use paypal.

 

[Nightcrawler]

And ? ...Patreon is a risk from the sense you are funding something that may never come to fruition adult content or not there for it makes sense to reduce that risk. I am not tarring all minors with the same brush but many can be impulsive and not necessarily judge the risk in the same way an adult would.So therefor if it goes someway towards protecting them it gets my vote

It also probably has something to do with EU legislation as well they come up with lots of weird shit

 

[Kaiww]

That i can understand , As prepaid cards can be applied for and used by minors

But i have to say it is my personally preferred payment method, i am not really interested in giving any internet company/website/jack of the box my credit card number or my bank account.

I absolutely love pay-safe cards because its in for me one of the safest way of payment, i use them on steam and i do not understand why i can not use it on preatron. I slightly understand the reasoning behind the concern about "legal age" but in Germany you get a bank account from 14 up......so where is the point again. ?

(So i can not support peatron projects i like because of this so it is )

 

[Dr PinkCake]

Yup, can confirm. It happened to me too. Lost funding and about 20-30 patrons. Don't know if payments will process, here's hoping.

 

[Les_Riggs]

Even more incompetence from the hierarchy at Patreon!

I have no problems with them not allowing pre-paid cards, but where was the pre-warning on this?
I use my credit card so I'm not affected, but how much money will this cost all the dev's, that keep this site in business??
And why did they wait until after this almighty clusterf*ck happened, to THEN advise supporters and devs that these cards will no longer be permitted?

Seriously, did any of these idiots working there even finish their business degrees?
Absolute muppets running the show, and this is on the back of them changing the laws on Adult games (despite initially telling new creators that they could create "whatever they wanted" when they signed up), and then trying to sting users with an extra charge for each creator they pledged to (at the back end of last year), which they ended up doing a back flip on.

 

[DarthSeduction]

And ? ...Patreon is a risk from the sense you are funding something that may never come to fruition adult content or not there for it makes sense to reduce that risk. I am not tarring all minors with the same brush but many can be impulsive and not necessarily judge the risk in the same way an adult would.So therefor if it goes someway towards protecting them it gets my vote

It also probably has something to do with EU legislation as well they come up with lots of weird shit

Again, it falls to the parents to teach their children how to properly use their finances. Much of patreon isn't projects like ours here, where things don't come to fruition, it's things like their favorite streamer or other small youtubers looking to supplement their income due to the adpocalypse. In short, it is not the purview of the corporation to raise your children for you.

It's this kind of thinking that justifies the attacks on youtube that caused the adpocalypse in the first place. If you can't control your household, raise your children to know right from wrong, and choose to find and fund projects which you support, you are the one with the problem. Not Youtube, not Patreon, not F95.

People seem to think that giving this responsibility to corporations is in no way harmful, because they're not the government, but when these companies do things like this they hurt real people by limiting our freedoms. People say, "Well it's their company, they can do what they want," but they're ignoring that they do this in reaction to us demanding that they do it. We need to stop giving companies the power to censor us, the power to decide how we can use OUR money. What methods we can use to pay, etc.

 

[Volta]

Yet another reason we need a reasonable alternative to patreon. As it stands patreon as a whole will not be hurt by this but creators will, i could get on the soapbox and go all youtubers union about how california tech companies don't respect the little guy and are not properly regulated, allowing them to effectively achieve monopolies in a given area simply because law hasn't caught up with internet businesses yet but to be honest i'd just like a service that does it's job well and left us to make what we want to make.

 

[MaxCarna]

Phew, at least it was not just me. I went from 540 patrons to 435, that hurt!

 

[Gomly1980]

how much money will this cost all the dev's, that keep this site in business??

No devs "keep Patreon in business".

It's a multi million dollar business ranging from artists to musicians to web creators. H game devs make up a small portion of their income.

Absolute muppets running the show, and this is on the back of them changing the laws on Adult games (despite initially telling new creators that they could create "whatever they wanted" when they signed up), and then trying to sting users with an extra charge for each creator they pledged to (at the back end of last year), which they ended up doing a back flip on.

Paypal were behind the rule change, not Patreon. Paypal make up a hell of a lot of Patreons income as well as a lot of other sites and have all the power.

Yet another reason we need a reasonable alternative to patreon.

There won't be a Patreon alternative for many years, if ever.

Patreon is popular with us as patreons due to Paypal which we use for our online banking. In order to allow all material Patreon banned you'd need a site that had a trusted payment system and right now one of those doesn't exist besides Paypal.

A lot of us won't use our credit cards online and pre paid is extra effort I can do without when I can use Paypal.

 

[Les_Riggs]

Paypal were behind the rule change, not Patreon. Paypal make up a hell of a lot of Patreons income as well as a lot of other sites and have all the power.

Yeah I was aware of that. It's still a huge fail on Patreon's part though.
They shouldn't have been making promises that they clearly couldn't keep, especially as they were initially promoting on their homepage, that they welcomed "all forms of creativity".

 

[Gomly1980]

Yeah I was aware of that. It's still a huge fail on Patreon's part though.
They shouldn't have been making promises that they clearly couldn't keep, especially as they were initially promoting on their homepage, that they welcomed "all forms of creativity".

To be fair, I don't think they were banking on Paypal pulling rank on them. It's not often a 3rd party site has as much pull as Paypal does, Google is the only other I can think of, I doubt they thought anything like this would happen.

They can't go against Paypal, they would lose millions, so when they say jump Patreon says how high and how long do you want me to stay in the air for.

 

[crugh2112]

Yeah, I got the message from my bank today. I was not aware of this problem and scoffed at them for flagging two accounts that bill me monthly for quite some time now. I guess I have to like my bank again for doing their job.

 

[MaxCarna]

The world are changing fast, this one are huge:

You must be registered to see the links

Facebook launched a fast payment platform, besides Google.

As a creator I only used Paypal in the first month, then quickly switched to Payoneer.

The blockchain systems are spreading quickly in the bank system, with permissioned networks. Not the public model from crypto currencies. I would be more humble if I were Paypal

 

[Dr PinkCake]

The world are changing fast, this one are huge:

You must be registered to see the links

Facebook launched a fast payment platform, besides Google.

As a creator I only used Paypal in the first month, then quickly switched to Payoneer.

The blockchain systems are spreading quickly in the bank system, with permissioned networks. Not the public model from crypto currencies. I would be more humble if I were Paypal

Yes! As soon as I saw Payoneer, something I had not even heard of before, it was my first choice over PayPal. Not only cause it is 17 USD per large transaction cheaper (!!!) but also cause I hate PayPal with a passion as their history shows that they are pro censorship and wants to control how you spend your money online.

 

[OttO]

Well kids, if they actually moved to the UK, that may explain their change in stance towards adult content and it'll probably get worse.


Perhaps Brits here can shed some light on the subject and correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't internet there somewhat censored (obligatory adult filter that one can appeal to the isp), content such as bdsm illegal and manga games refused classification?

 

[HiEv]

UPDATE: From the reports I've been hearing it's gone from around 20-25% lost payments, down to around 10-15% lost payments and dropping. Still above the ~5%(? I have less data here) or so norm, but not as bad.

That said, some people have patrons who can't get any of their cards to work, while others have patrons who've dropped support due to Patreon locking up their credit cards.

Still a pretty ugly mess. :disappointed:

 

[Gomly1980]

Perhaps Brits here can shed some light on the subject and correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't internet there somewhat censored (obligatory adult filter that one can appeal to the isp), content such as bdsm illegal and manga games refused classification?

You are very wrong. Nothing is censored especially when it comes to sex as long as it isn't illegal.

Things like CP (which includes loli and shota), beastiality and rape. Even then it's not exactly censored. You can still find those things but don't get caught looking at CP. It's not like they monitor anything, it's rare to see anyone in court for it but it has happened.

There are no forced filters. Obviously you can have parental locks put on that block content of a certain kind but you have to ask for those to be set up and you still get a password to unlock it for the adults of the house.

No idea where you heard that.

The only thing forced by "some" ISP's is prime time throttling. Download speed is reduced by some ISP's during prime time but it doesn't effect gaming.

The ISP i'm with doesn't throttle but our last one did. Never had forced censorship though. The internet is left alone here.