Progress Report, Future $2 Tier Change, 17/05 - 24

Hello everyone and welcome to another in the line of progress reports.

Today has been a trying day. Long story short, us creators have recently received an email by Patreon noting another upcoming update to the TOS, which may or may not impact what I do here depending on interpretation. While it might just be that it won't impact me at all, I none the less have begun the process of setting up a Subscribestar as a backup to my Patreon, which will act as a mirror in terms of content, so I'll have the two of them running parallel to each other featuring the same backer perks, etc.

It was in the process of setting this up that I checked in on my Payoneer account, which is the online bank responsible for Patreon money transfers to my local bank, and realized they had a pending warning about a slew of documents that I had not filled out, and that if I failed to do so before June 2:nd, my account would be locked and no transfers would be permitted. I had not received any emails warning me about this, so suffice to say I've spent most of my waking hours today simply filling out forms, looking up unnecessarily convoluted bank terms, tossing bank statements this way and that, in a bid to remain in compliance with payment processors.

I don't generally like to speak about the things that are going on behind the scenes, opting to instead focus on matters related to my content, but I feel I needed to explain myself as to what is happening for transparency's sake, as well as, maybe, to vent a little bit.

Now, onto the topic of the $2 tier change:

The way Subscribestar's code is set up means that it invariably creates a Discord tier for each tier that exists, and there is no way to remove that. As a consequence I've had to either choose between desperately trying to communicate with future $2 tier backers on Subscribestar that their Discord access simply gives them nothing - with the inevitable result that many would not read it and be very disappointed and/or angry, which no doubt would have an impact on my already strained inbox - or to simply allow some kind of limited access to the Discord for the tier on both platforms.

I'm thus of the mind that I'll be including a kind of "Basic" Discord role benefit for $2 backers, both here on Patreon and over on Subscribestar, so as to make things a bit smoother and also fairer. With basic I also really mean basic, as it won't have the benefits of seeing the work in progress channels and the likes (which the $5 and above are privy to), but it'll have access to the General chat, the Smut Exchange where we share naughty stuff (within TOS, of course), and the Announcements channel, which will enable the core tier to be a bit more plugged in to what is going on with my work, and allows the folks belonging to it to hang out and talk and share things and so on. This $2 tier change will come into effect once I decide that my Subscribestar is in a decent enough shape to have its launch announced, so nothing will happen just yet. Regardless, I wanted to be forthcoming with it so it doesn't come from a clear sky.

Tumultuous times, but we roll with the punches, and like the fellas in my work, plow ever onward. Thank you, as always, for your continued support and for all of your kind words. Scenario work is coming up this weekend, with its release planned for the 27:th, so we'll have a short lull in animation releases until that date hits. Hope you're doing alright out there, and that the weather isn't as mercilessly hot where you are.

Take care of yourselves, and each other!
/DH