Catherynne M. Valente
patreon
Patreon On Some Nonsense Again
🕑 Added 2025-04-05 19:25:38 +0000 UTCWELP.
In addition to literally everything being on fire on every level, Patreon has chosen to not delay their marvelous billing changes and plow on ahead with them as of this month.
Many changes took effect at Patreon today, with more to come in November--pretty much all devastating to creators' income, especially those of us who rely on Patreon to...you know...not die.
It's this shit, only now it's just happening to everyone.
We knew these changes were coming, though we hoped they'd see the light (as they sometimes had before) and many of us have tried to ameliorate them as best we could, but despite the world economy looking the way it does, Patreon chose to press ahead with them.
I woke up to my income slashed by 28% despite no change in patrons. I'm not alone, many, many creators did--all while our economy burns.
I'm honestly not sure what to do, but there's a few things. Not a lot, but a few.
The main changes are: any subscriptions made through the iOS/Apple store now have the 30% fee applied, which comes out of our portion of the sub. It also seems iOS subscriptions are now subject to a 75 DAY hold, which is truly beyond any normal processing time.
This is why most folks lost around 30% overnight.
If you want to help out, obviously, becoming a patron if you weren't before (especially the over 600 of you who signed up during the last insane UI change which led folks to believe signing up for free got you access to all tiers and, probably confusingly, haven't gotten much of anything because that's literally not how Patreon itself told anyone it worked) would help shore up the gaping hole we're all grappling with.
But if you do this, for me or anyone, or change your tier, do it through a BROWSER, which circumvents all these issues. There are no extra fees when you use the browser to sign up or change your tier.
You could also email #Patreon, as we've all done, & complain. I'm not sure they're listening, though.
If you're already a patron and you signed up through the Apple store, unfortunately, cancelling & re-subscribing through a browser will only work at the end of a billing cycle, as they won't take a new sub before the current cycle is up.
But beyond that...it doesn't look like good. We are already terrified--artists are always considered expendable & economic chaos means no one has much wiggle room. To do this do the hundreds of thousands of artists who rely on #Patreon to live when it's about to cost $50 for a fucking carton of milk is utterly gutting.
Every one of the changes that took effect this month (and a few more that will take effect in November) takes money away from creators & gives it to Patreon & Apple. Hardly anyone can just eat an instant 30% drop in income--except companies like that, but they'll be fine. Of course they will! Number go up!
Will we? I don't know.
It feels gross to even put out there that there's not much of a way through except to somehow magically make a bunch of new patrons appear out of thin air. But that's basically where Patreon has left us. Boxer says I will work harder, but Boxer ended up glue. You know?
As a neurodiverse single parent of a neurodiverse kid deeply struggling to find a way to complete work while not neglecting my child & also living in fear of my own government's plans for us, I feel so helpless. Knocked down by all this at the time I can least afford it. I know others have it worse.
And that's the best I can explain it, & I'm sure I'm not the only one you've seen in the sea of troubles we all live in freaking out at having to swallow yet another portion of garbage so that line go up.
I can't begin to express my gratitude for all of you, the patrons who support my work and make living life and feeding my child remotely possible; it's none of our fault. Jesus Christ, you're all my fucking heroes every single month and not in a geologic age could I ever repay even one of you for what you've done for us.
Which is part of why this is all so galling. We trust this site to build our beautiful communities, and most of the time, it behaves and is beyond blessings--but every once in awhile, they seem to forget that they work for us, not the other way around.
Like a lot of things at the moment, there's just not a lot of recourse for us poor bastards on the ground.
I meekly conclude by saying that if you wanted to upgrade from a free or other membership, or go over and sign up for my Substack, even, it would be an enormous help. Just do it thorugh your browser.
I understand if you can't, believe me.
I wish it weren't this way, & I hope it won't be someday. Fuck everything.
I will post pretty things soon, I promise. In the meantime, if you want to discuss this or other topics, come join us on the Discord.
Comments
Jon Heiman
And all because Patreon wanted to have a stupid app... PS: the Discord invite link isn't working.
Juliette Wade
I'm glad I joined via browser, then! I'm so sorry about all this.
Denise Cicuto
I'm sorry to hear this. I can't give much but I just upgraded to the $1 a month level.
John Mili
Hello 👋
Jeremy Brett
Ugh, I'm sorry, Cat. But so many of us are here for you, and we're not going anywhere.
Mary Alice Fraughton
I upped my pledge by a little bit. I’m sorry Patreon is responding to the self-immolation of America by lighting a bunch of artists on fire so they can make s’mores with Apple. I had a whole long thing written out about shame and how fucked up it is that you have to feel weird about asking for money. But then I felt weird too, because if someone was sending me money and also lecturing me on how I should feel about that, I would immediately feel worse. Which kicked off a pretty self-indulgent shame spiral for me, and who even has the energy for that? My god. In conclusion: who the fuck knows, take my fucking $30 and feel however the fuck you want to feel about it. Hang in there.
