Should F95Zone have a Patreon like Support system as some devs or their contents are being kicked?

[H.K]

I discovered f95zone not more than 3 months ago & have had binged through 50-60 games in that time, I had a lotta free time. -_-

One thing I found out over this period time is that How Patreon Suddenly started to nick off/kick genres/sex games from the site & how that affected games, especially, those Incest games.

Many games have become kinda same with same type story/structure and have been dulled by no creativity (everyone may not agree with this). Some of which is caused by the boredom of the creators, not pointing any fingers, but most of it is because of how Patreon has started it's crackdown of Incestous/Sex Games on it's site, If I'm correct.


Now, I have arguments for both for and against this idea in my head, and Creating something like this for some one genre of games might seem stupid but this Can have far-reaching effects in the future for the development & growth of this community.

Not much has to change from the way it is now, only that, those who liked playing a game can now support the creators, (who would also be members of this community) without leaving the site, while other members can still download games without hitting any paywall.

I haven't touched on a LOT of details because this is just an Idea I had in my head and wanted to have a conversation about it with the community.

So, vote & leave a comment whether there should be a direct & easy to use donation system for the devs on the site or Not, or If you have some other ideas/things in mind, comment that as well.

Thanks for reading up to this, You're Awesome

 

[nln0]

I mean there is a lot of threads that have the dev's patreon link to it. Most pirate sites wouldn't do something like that if anything.

 

[H.K]

That's What I was talking about, not bother going to patreon at all! And about the last part, yea it's pretty unorthodox and bold in some cases, but If the devs agree to let the members & community here play it for free and give them fast and realtime feedback as well as monetary support from some, I would think about it tho, If I was constricted by Patreon rules there.
But then again, I can see that not All would wanna jump in here, even after that, hence my question to the community.

 

[DarthSeduction]

Setting up a legitimate and trustworthy donation platform is not as simple as posting a few links. You have to get in touch with a trustworthy payment provider, and they're gonna want to know what's going on. For instance, if each of the developers on this site were to simply provide their paypal donation link, Paypal would start asking where those developers were getting all that money from. And to be clear, this is something they're required to do by law. You could be selling drugs or sex trafficking or something, and with a recent American law on the matter of sex trafficking, they would be held liable.

So we couldn't just use some simple method, it would take a whole lot more. A Patreon clone that is opening in response to Patreon censorship, called Sponsorion, has been hard at work for longer than I've been on this site and they still haven't launched. To add something like that to F95 wouldn't just be a pain in the ass, it would be prohibitively expensive, cost as much as a startup, require that the site begin to comply with a lot more laws, invite scrutiny from governments etc. In other words, it would kill f95 and replace it with something that isn't even close to what we once were.

 

[partanen]

Hmm, I think that H.K. meant something much, much more simple: Option of Donating through F95Zone.com. Not a Patreon clone. Which could be done simply by making possible to earmark a donation to go to certain Dev. System would work out of trust to F95Zone that it'll forward donation to right recipient.
But then the issue would be the amount of money: Let's say there's 50 harshly pro-incest, pro-bestiality, pro-[add patreon banned genre] Game Developers who would like to use the option. Suddenly there's, let's say, 200 regular donators for each of them. Each donating 1-5 $ / month. = 10.000-50.000$ / Month on the top of that 1.000$ or something F95Zone is already collecting each month through donations, ads and other what not. Can F95Zone handle that large sum under radar? And it's only the beginning: Months later: tens-hundreds Developers with hundreds-thousands regular Donators each Donating 1-5$/Month, well, count yourself... and it's monthly... and, yes, numbers, amounts and sums are moving up and down and left and right... and some devs are just trying get some quick money... and some users are assholes and don't like the content of games and are reporting to law-enforcement...

 

[DarthSeduction]

Hmm, I think that H.K. meant something much, much more simple: Option of Donating through F95Zone.com. Not a Patreon clone. Which could be done simply by making possible to earmark a donation to go to certain Dev. System would work out of trust to F95Zone that it'll forward donation to right recipient.
But then the issue would be the amount of money: Let's say there's 50 harshly pro-incest, pro-bestiality, pro-[add patreon banned genre] Game Developers who would like to use the option. Suddenly there's, let's say, 200 regular donators for each of them. Each donating 1-5 $ / month. = 10.000-50.000$ / Month on the top of that 1.000$ or something F95Zone is already collecting each month through donations, ads and other what not. Can F95Zone handle that large sum under radar? And it's only the beginning: Months later: tens-hundreds Developers with hundreds-thousands regular Donators each Donating 1-5$/Month, well, count yourself... and it's monthly... and, yes, numbers, amounts and sums are moving up and down and left and right... and some devs are just trying get some quick money... and some users are assholes and don't like the content of games and are reporting to law-enforcement...

Currently F95 donations are handled via paypal... or at least mine was. And a paypal donation for site maintenance is fine. F95 having to funnel that donation money to the individual paypals of developers though would be a full time job for someone, first off, and secondly, would land us right back at the, "Where is this money coming from?" question I posted already.

Trusting F95 with safer methods, like direct deposit routing information would require a legal team, payment provider, and government scrutiny all over again. I wasn't imagining f95 actually changing their layout at all, but simply adding a donation system to the game threads, maybe a link you could open from it that took you to a developer's individual donation pages. Because that's the only really viable way to make something like this work. There are simply too many developers and too little staff. Once you add money to the equation things change dramatically.

 

[partanen]

Yeah, that 'staying under radar' part is my main concern too. Trust from devs is easily earned and easily maintained, and organizing money traffic is easy task too. But avoiding questions about a site collecting thousands of hard currencies each month is a much harder task.
Maybe devs should start selling fan post cards? Fan collectibles can be priced ridiculously and it's totally legal to sell pieces of cardboard in gram prices of pure Heroine or Cocaine. And if Drug Enforcement Officers want test if there's something illegal substances saturated into that paper, well, go on...

 

[Dr PinkCake]

Crypto donations would work, but it's not mainstream yet.

 

[DarthSeduction]

Crypto donations would work, but it's not mainstream yet.

That and I personally wouldn't want to mess with crypto unless it finally gets regulated

 

[Dr PinkCake]

That and I personally wouldn't want to mess with crypto unless it finally gets regulated

Well the point of crypto is decentralization, meaning you keep your own money safe not some bank; so regulation is not something to strive for. It is a great way of transferring funds quickly with low fees. I think it would be an excellent way to fund projects. It's only the volatility that is scary atm.

 

[Gomly1980]

This is a pirate site. You would be asking the people running this site to turn it from that into one directly funding developers which is the exact opposite of what the site is.

I'm not sure that will ever happen. I don't think that's something they want to get involved with.

Not only that but they would have to find a way to move those funds because Paypal would ask questions and it would get this site, again a piracy site, a lot of unwanted attention.

It's a terrible idea.

 

[H.K]

but simply adding a donation system to the game threads, maybe a link you could open from it that took you to a developer's individual donation pages

Yeah, that 'staying under radar' part is my main concern too

Yea, after all that info I genuinely didn't know, It seems like the better, more realistic Idea, If the F95zone devs would actually do it.

It's a terrible idea.

Apparently, it is, hence the conversation for a better one. However, not everyone would be force to donate, just those who would really liked/wanted to support some particular games, many from this pirate site community still donate to devs, If I recall correctly, just to make it clear.

 

[Gomly1980]

Apparently, it is, hence the conversation for a better one. However, not everyone would be force to donate, just those who would really liked/wanted to support some particular games, many from this pirate site community still donate to devs, If I recall correctly, just to make it clear.

People still donate but not through the site. The site acting as a donation site to developers just would not work and it would end up getting shut down.

It would bring in far too much unwanted attention and isn't what a pirate site is about.

 

[H.K]

People still donate but not through the site. The site acting as a donation site to developers just would not work and it would end up getting shut down.

It would bring in far too much unwanted attention and isn't what a pirate site is about.

True, true and true. But as Darth said above, there could thread for the developers from where would be links that would take you to a developer's individual donation page. Does this Idea, as well sound as bad?

This is meant to help & incentivize the devs, however small in magnitude, to make & finish proper games, which then can be pirated to one's heart content, where devs and games are getting kicked off from donation sites and they are abandoning long worked on projects.

This might sound dumb or obvious at first, a pirate site would be much better surf on, if it was one with properly finished games. Is that a wrong way to look at it?

 

[DarthSeduction]

True, true and true. But as Darth said above, there could thread for the developers from where would be links that would take you to a developer's individual donation page. Does this Idea, as well sound as bad?

This is meant to help & incentivize the devs, however small in magnitude, to make & finish proper games, which then can be pirated to one's heart content, where devs and games are getting kicked off from donation sites and they are abandoning long worked on projects.

This might sound dumb or obvious at first, a pirate site would be much better surf on, if it was one with properly finished games. Is that a wrong way to look at it?

Technically we already do that as an external donation site, with patreon. All posts have that link. The thing is F95 could never host a donation service as a part of the site without bringing in the unwanted attention that I and Gormly are talking about.

 

[Nightcrawler]

It wouldn't work the logistics of doing such a thing would be a minefield

You would have to set up a secure payment site
you would have to distribute payments to Devs
How would you achieve such criteria, As running such an operation would require full time staffing to maintain it 24/7

Do you make F95 a pay site to cover the costs of Being a donation go between between public and devs

While patreon isn't great at the moment it is what we have and i'm sure devs will adapt over time

Bringing A dev payment system into F95 a no for me as it would be a logistical and expensive nightmare