Patreon Money to Content Creators

[angelobodetti]

Hi Everyone,

i love LaunchBox. I paid for it and I have no issue with that what so ever because it's an amazing product. 

A huge reason why I love LaunchBox is the user content and themes. The community puts in countless hours and selflessly put that content here for all to enjoy. 

I am not a LaunchBox Patreon because I've purchased the software and gotten what I've paid for (I'm very happy). 

With that being said I would be a Patreon supporter if that money went to the content creators here in the forum. 

Theres a handful of people that supply a majority of the content and it is all amazing. We should support these people. LaunchBox should as well since the use created content directly affects license sales. 

Do you all agree? Should LaunchBox give a portion of the Patreon money to content creators? 

If not, I encourage the creators to create their own accounts and I personally will donate. I personally am a leech and have no clue how to make content, which is why I'm so thankful to the people ego so. 

I have no issues paying for stuff I use - especially when I make requests! 

[Lordmonkus]

I have absolutely zero opinion on this matter but I can see how this can turn into a very touchy subject quickly.

Just to get in front of this right now, if this thread goes any further I highly recommend people think before they post and keep it civil or I will shut it down in a hurry.

[CTRL-ALT-DEFEAT]

Hey @angelobodetti

Just want to chime in with my two cents.

First of all, just chiming in since I am a person contributing a lot of content to the site and I really appreciate your sentiment! I honestly enjoy making the theme videos and making them available to everyone else here. I only started using After Effects this last February, so I'm still pretty green, so it's always nice when other people enjoy them. That said, other than finding the art, maybe doing some clean-up on what I find and putting it all together into a video theme, I don't TECHNICALLY create anything; I'm using the work of others. This is why I don't watermark the video that I make or anything. They are free for anybody to use because I can't claim ownership of them in any way.

I can't speak for other content creators at all and there are many people here that do actually create the content they provide, but I wouldn't want to receive anything for what I put up here. It wouldn't feel right to me and I just have fun making them!

I also support Jason and the LaunchBox team via Patreon (which is something I don't do in general) because these guys, in my opinion, are the BIGGEST creators here (LB development, the YouTube channels, the servers and maintenance to house all the content other users provide, etc.) and I think we have a great community here and if my contributions help with keeping it thriving, then it's worth it all the way.

Anyway, can't speak for others and I definitely agree there are other folks are making content worthy of compensation, but I'm not one of them ... I just like overloading the video theme section with more stuff to download.

I'm just happy if other people enjoy them too and that is good enough for me.

[angelobodetti]

Not meant to be controversial. I think content creators should be compensated (if they want to of course). It would also encourage more people to do it which is great for the community. 

Mid any of you have your own Patreon, at the very least you should put the link with your files and allow people to contribute. 

I compensate a few people now through Patreon. Because if a couple extra bucks a month from me can help you create more stuff, them I'm all for it.

[Lordmonkus]

I know you didn't mean it to be controversial. I have just seen enough discussions on the internet about similar subjects of money for content that is traditionally viewed as free so I know just how fast shit can go downhill.

I know this isn't exactly the same thing but the whole paid mods for Skyrim on Steam fiasco is one example.

I was just putting my warning out there in case people got their panties in a bunch and starting bitching and talking shit.

[SentaiBrad]

To be honest, and this is coming from a purely business aspect, that starts to get extremely tricky. Not only would each user then become a "contract" worker to LaunchBox, we'd have extra tax issues, and so would each user. I mean, it's up to someone what they do and don't report for taxes, but it starts to get very complicated, very very fast. I'm certainly not saying you're wrong, I like the sentiment as well, but this is something that is extremely more complicated than that.

I'll use an example. Not too long ago, we had two theme issues pop up internally. One of these issues was surrounding specific themes that may or may not come heavily from a template. I'm no stranger to these, I use these in my work all the time because they're affordable, I have the licenses to use them forever, and they save me A TON of time, and my client a ton of time when starting from these. Starting from scratch costs significantly more money. However, I have the right to do what I want with these templates, paid or unpaid, forever. Some places are not that accommodating, and then we get in to the business of needing to check to make sure everyone has the proper rights to use what they made. What if someone stole those templates from a torrent site? They don't have the right to redistribute them, they've utilized them illegally technically speaking, and then we're the ones at stake. We then have to remove the file, piss people off who may have liked it, and potentially piss the creators off. Then add on to that, if we paid them. When you start making money from something, through someone else, A TON of factors start to come in to play from the business perspective that can cause issues. We make a decent amount from Patreon too, around 41 people last I checked, but that's not enough money to pay someone what it's really worth. I just did some work for a client recently, not related to LaunchBox, and I made what we make on Patreon in 4 days. I'm being a little extra transparent on this because this is a very tricky subject and I'd rather be honest than try and hide the reasons. We honestly don't make enough to contract the amount of people who use their skill, and it creates a lot of potential legal problems. It can certainly always change, we can certainly add more or contract someone out to do something here or there, but setting up this sort of profit sharing is much more difficult than it sounds.

I hope that response doesn't anger anyone, I do totally understand and very much appreciate that sentiment.

[angelobodetti]

You actually bring up a lot of good points. So instead of LaunchBox paying their own Patreon money to content creators, we should all encourage the creators to create their own and then we should support them.

Maybe even go as far as add a "donate" button on the diebloads so if you see something you like you can throw a few bucks at the creator. This would be totally up to the users. 

The more hapoybcreators we have, the more content we get. I am personally happy to donate money for things I like. 

[SentaiBrad]

That sounds like a happy medium if that's what they want. I'll bring it up to Jason and Kirsten, see what they think.

[SNAK3ATER]

Just to chime in, I agree with both @SentaiBrad and @CTRL-ALT-DEFEAT in terms of business perspectives and ownership/legal rights this is an extremely tricky subject and it can backfire as it happened before in a couple of communities I was active in..

 

Let me give you an example, I used to be a member of a modding community for a certain fighting game. The community started out great at the beginning with everyone contributing contents for free stemming from their own effort and passion for the game similar to what we have here in Launchbox (Currently one of the best communities imo, I hope it never changes) but then the admin introduced a donate function under every user account and guess what happened down the road? Some modders started to send Mod creations to only the users who donated the money to them instead of uploading the content to the downloads section basically making the mods Pay-to-download and believe me as a modder myself many of the mods were not even original assets which made things worse.

The admin did not interfere and eventually greed lurked in so far the modders were publicly announcing on their content support thread that they'll only PM donators with the download link so I deactivated my account at the end.. this is just an example of some good community became toxic due to greed but you can get the idea.

I do understand your sentiment but I think there are other ways we can show support to content creators that does not involve monetization.

[Lordmonkus]

Yup, it's one of those things where it starts out with good intentions and it goes tits up in a hurry if incorrectly handled and it's very difficult to handle correctly.

Like they say "The road to hell is paved with good intentions"

[Thatman84]

I made a similar post to the OP's, over at another community because of the same reasons. What some people create is just outstanding and in real life i would do something to show appreciation but thats hard to do online.

Anyway I think all the technicalities have been covered and I would not be able to understand someone being angered by Brads answers, the transparency of this community is one of the biggest assets imo.

Also I never considered that example SNAK3ATER gave could happen, not in my nature I suppose...I would have suggested something similar as i have seen that "beer me" function and loved that...some people deserve a beer. I think it would probably be alright here but theres always the risk of it going south.

The issue is far to complicated for me but it does leave the question of how do we show our appreciation...

 

Idk maybe a raffle or poll....community pitch in then someone wins a voucher or something...get yourself a new hardrive for all those videos and artwork  

Obviously everything would be open to abuse but would be nice to see something come of this topic.

I will always champion media creators from any community....I cant make that stuff so without them our setups would look like MAME (no offence mame)

[neil9000]

1 minute ago, Thatman84 said:

I will always champion media creators from any community....I cant make that stuff so without them our setups would look like MAME (no offence mame)

100% agree, i have absolutely zero artistic talent, but my BigBox looks great and that's all thanks to the wonderful artists and video creators we have here in this awesome community. 

[Thatman84]

1 hour ago, neil9000 said:

100% agree, i have absolutely zero artistic talent, but my BigBox looks great and that's all thanks to the wonderful artists and video creators we have here in this awesome community. 

Yep here and other places all over the scene.