I do not know why but I do find the admin Patreon subscribing to their own website quite funny. Even though there is nothing wrong with it.
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Awesome! If I may suggest a slight change, maybe make the Donator Tag reflect the donation tiers and perhaps a $1 tier that gets its own tag as well? A little flair can do wonders for encouraging people to cough up. 😛
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Great that it's finally here. Maybe I will donate :)
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So far the only border customization I've seen is dashed/dotted/double line, and you can change the colours and the rounding angle of the outline (see my profile for example).
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Oh, maybe you'd want to share a list of the gift in the second and third tier, respectively. It'll probably get leaked sooner or later anyway, and it'll give people an idea of what to expect. Also, the third tier doesn't seem to specify which gifs are in the second tier (I assume it's the first 25); I guess people might want to pick some gifs that are not represented in the second tier to represent their third tier (not that most winners would know the difference anyway).
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Hey Dan, I wasn't sure whether the GIFs should be more of a surprise, or if previews should be available for all of them. You're right though, the first 25 GIFs listed are for the second tier, and then there is a small gap, and then 75 listed for the third tier.
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I thought supplying giveaways would be sufficient to support steamgifts - as without them the site would suffer - but apparently that is not the case anymore :OI
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Supplying giveaways make the giveaways go round and round.
Site itself might need bit of money for the same...
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it has lasted thus far on advertising - and now also has bundlestars partner program - the extra, and I admit in my opinion, only serves to create a two tier differentiation on the site between those who can afford to give that way - beyond the monies they are already spending (no matter how little it may be) on giveaways and those who cannot !
that is a personal opinon though - so I fully understand why others would not see it that way :)
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but more you grow online, more it will cost to run. as there are no giveaway plusses for patrons, i see nothing bad with this
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without the giveaways there is no site - that you can see nothing bad with this is fine - as that is a personal opinon - I on the other hand can; but do not expecf others to feel the same as me :)
as I said already in this thread - when agreeing with others - a simple donation button would have been better for us (thus not singling out those who do not become patreons, as they don't have the SG premium looking star) :O)
but I fully appreciate that there are those who can afford the extra - we cannot at this time and. even if we could, we would not want to have the star next to our name showing that we paid money :)
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Then again, without servers there isn't site either...
It's not free to run site with the scale of SG...
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as I said before - they managed it for several years without patreon - and now also have the bundlestars deal - alongside the adverts - as I don't know their overheads I cannot speak for their needs - irrespective it is done now, but I cannot afford to become a star member - nor would I want that star next to my name even if I could afford it :)
but I get why others feel the need to have it :P
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I suppose the star is somewhat unnecessary. Gifs and customization is more acceptable as they are on profile. And the no ads or tracking isn't visible so doesn't matter.
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Do you know if you can donate, accept the ad-free and analytics-free reward, but NOT activate the star?
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Yes, there's a checkbox to enable or disable the star.
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Thank you for the reply (and everything else ofc!).
Any chance at a one-time Donate option (without benefits) or better yet a way to donate directly outside of Patreon?
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At the moment, the only one-time option would be subscribing for a month, and then canceling. No plans for donations outside of Patreon, but I'll keep an eye on feedback.
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How will you tackle the inevitable scripts that non-paying people are going to use to "hide" these paid features? Or replicate some of them?
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I certainly don't mind if users write scripts to hide or replicate the features (Mully already has one for hiding the stars a few comments below). However, the features would be difficult to replicate, since everyone on the site would need to install the scripts to have the same effect. For example, you could write a script for customizing win GIFs, but obviously only users with the script installed would see the GIF you have selected.
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FWIW, I'm guessing Mully's gif below is more a testament to her photoshop skills than evidence of a script...but I could be wrong, and surely such a script will be written at some point.
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it's already done, i updated the skin yesterday. but like cg says it won't affect anyone but people using the script (userstyle in this case), it's a fix for me, not the site. 😇
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Thanks for the response, good points raised I hadn't thought about.
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yep - this is why I would have preferred donations - rather than subs - as we could have done it, with a quick donation when. and if, we could afford it - but we really wouldn't want to see that star next to our name ! - there are more than enough things on the forum that create divisions as it is :P
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+1
Mully nailed it. Great idea, costs should be shared or CG make a small profit to grow the site. However its going to initially fracture the already drawn battlelines even further
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I can't really chip in this time either, not really having luck with the finding job part. If you'd be luckier - the donator tag can be hidden, at least that's what I get from the "You will have the option to enable a donator tag" part, so that one is fine .)
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yeah - but I believe we still have to sub up - which is not something we can sign up to - as we spend a fair bit of our free money on the games (giveaways) already (we don't have that much free money at all :( - so cannot justify signing up to a long-term thing) - but a simple anon. donation button would have allowed to do this when, and if we can - still, glad their might be a way to get rid of the star some way :) that simply screams at us as something we wouold not want :-P (confirmed above)
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Nice! i'll do this tonight!
Thanks for the hard work CG!
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If you really needed a patreon for donations, congrats for making this step, i wont donate because i really need all the money I have (because I dont have more money that actually my family does) but if I had some I would donate because you deserve it. Maybe one day I have something to give :P
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Nice :) A bit sad that there are no option to donate for longer terms, but it's not that important. Maybe I'll join the club some day.
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? Patreon works on a month-by-month basic
"$3 or more per month"
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I want to be like the cool kids and have a fancy profile but I have medical bills, the lovely pleasure of fixing my PC, plus still manage to make giveaways so alas I must remain in the shadows watching the cool kids from afar once more.
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It is good that you can donate to a site that you really like but it makes me think of GTribe and I left it because of the elitists.
In my opinion it is better to spent the money on giveaways as the site has been up for such a long time without the monthly payments.
Btw this star sign makes me want to tell bad jokes... which will get me suspended I think. I don't mean it wrong just made me think of them qq.
Anyway good job.
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Your comment makes it seem like SG buys games to make giveaways instead of random users. o_O As for elitists, I think this site already has its version of elitists long before SG got a patreon account.
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I guess this is a great option for users who want and can help. Would be fun to try special gifs when doing big trains. Soft kitty picture for you! <3
Still would be better if there wasn't a star even optionally, and probably border choices would be for everybody. Otherwise it is playing on far from respectable desire of some people to put themselves into special "hat" in front of others. Ancient as the world but totally not beautiful desire. Info on profile page would be enough to show that person is helping the site; differences between premium and standard create unnecessary eye magnets on forum.
Also if there would be enough income, does site need advertisements? edit Okay I see that at the moment there is really not many patrons, probably at least for a while.
1$ tier with removing ads could be fine. 3$ tier, which builds to 36$ a year is too expensive for most of the world and for not very active users.
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Does anybody know if you can donate, accept the ad-free and analytics-free reward, but NOT activate the star?
Edit: sort of answering my own question: you can choose "No reward, I just want to support CG," enter any amount, and just keep using AdBlock. :p
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The star does not have to be activated. It's optional.
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From the Patreon privacy page:
Our service does not support Do Not Track requests at this time, which means our third party analytics providers may associate your usage on Patreon with your usage on other sites.
.
We use third-party advertising cookies to present you with opportunities while on Patreon. We also use retargeting cookies to present you with Patreon advertising on other websites.
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Are you sure it's that simple? And will those cookies clearly be identifiable as from Patreon?
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getting rid of advertisement cookies is that simple. Google Analytics is not, because even after you delete cookies your visit to Patreon will already be stored in google data - but blocking google analytics can be achieved using browser extensions for example (if you want to block them altogether while easilly use the broiwser as usual). Or even easier solution - if you don't wish for one particular site (like Patreon) to be store in your google ad data but you are ok with others runing analytics - visit this site in incognito mode. Incognito mode is not accessing your stored cookies nor cached data and it will not store stuff after you close it. So if you have problem with patreon only then
go incognito -> log in -> donateif you just now realized that basically 99% of internet gathers data about you (SG included ;p) and you are not ok with that at all - use browser addon, or if you are really paranoid run VM and VPN for everything since now ;)
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Thanks for the reply, zelg. Now that it appears that Patreon will be the only option, I will try incognito mode and hope it works. No need for VPN, etc.
I don't mind analytics in general, but I don't really want every site in the world to know I donated money to SG and consider me an easy mark.
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then incognito should be safe option ;) just don't log into your google account or other social account (so no going into gmail, YT, FB etc) in the same incognito session where you go to patreon ;)
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Thanks, no I didn't, and Patreon didn't make me enable cookies to proceed (which was my main concern).
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Still annoyed that I can't just do a lump sum, fire-and-forget donation.
Plus, I have to remember to cancel between 1-oct and 31-oct or I'm out another chunk of change.
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Cool idea.
It would be fun if once a year like for a week long there was the ability for everyone to pick from 100 gifs for winners! It would encourage a lot of giving and maybe even get more patrons from the "trial"!
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guess I'll donate when I get my payment ;) thanks :>
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Can someone elaborate, what exactly is meant by "Analytics Removed"? Google Analytics? How does that even work? When someone connects to the site they are identified via Steam OpenId ... then the site would need to check if they're registered with Patreon, Even if this only takes a few seconds data will probably have been sent to Google. Also, what's the point when Patreon collects Analytics instead?
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You don't have analytics enabled on SG, I doubt SG will be checking with Patreon all the time - most likely it will just checked once a month to see if you are still subscribed. So your SG activity will not be recorded by Google Analytics and this data will not be stored by google. For once it may slightly improve loading times and overall performance of SG for you, but also it will for example not affect your Google ads. So even if you were to spend hours discussing let's say wem Call of Duty on SG discussions you will not suddenly be shown tons of ads for said CoD game (that is if you discuss on SG alone, if you go to external site it will not matter ;p). As for Patreon - with or without SG, data will be sent to google, but google will see that you visited patreon, maybe that you donated, but it will not give it access to your data from SG. For more details you may see my comment to trentjaspar 3 comments above.
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Disappointed by the rewards distribution, so I just put in a smaller amount for nothing. But since payments aren't processed till next month, I hope you'll actually keep all the people who've pledged so far (the only other project I'm supporting on patreon always loses a bunch of people every month because of credit cards expiring etc. - most seem to resub, but that only counts for the next month again)
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I'm wondering how there's no priority to support tickets or access to whatever exclusive area...
Patreon feels much more like a monthly donation than a subscription to content reachable by third parties addons/scripts.
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it was already discussed - any rewards that would denefit you directly on SG were vastly voted against, with cg himself not wanting anything like that, having just cosmetic changes. If you had priority on support tickets for users who wait days and weeks for replies it may look unfair, you would have consiracy theories (tickets are so slow, because cg wants to force us to donate) all over forums right away. And exclusive area would quickly become "pay2win" because you can be sure that very quickly a lot of Donators would start sharing exclusive private GAs only there. And again - Donation should not affect chance of wins or opportunities to win in any way. Patreon is only for those who simply want to support website they love, not for you to get any kind of advantage on SG.
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Well, an exclusive area is bound to happen anyway. I predict it's going to take less than 2 weeks until the first Patreons only group is founded. At this point I'm just wondering if it's going to be called Patreons Club™ or SteamGifts Elite™.
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Those are trademarked now by the way. If you guys wanna use them I demand free admittance :D
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Difference here is that it will happen outside of SG itself, so outside of SG jurisdiction. And SG cannot really be judged by what SG users do outside of SG, it does not mean thou that SG should allow such things on SG itself simply because "otherwise they will do it in Steam group anyway".
To give hypothethical and intentionally extreme example - let's say you are a white pride neo-nazi and want to give your games only to like-minded neo-nazi fuckheads - SG cannot stop you from creating Steam Group called "White Pride Giveaways" and sharing GAs among yourselves. Does it mean that SG should introduce racial filters into SG etc (where every user states their race, religion, political views etc) simply because "if we don't introduce exclusive area for these people it is bound to happen anyway"? ;P
Donators can organize themselves if they want, it's their choice, as long as it has nothing to do with SG itself I see no problem with that. Introducing such thing to SG would on the other hand be straight Pay2Win.
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too late - giggle
https://www.steamgifts.com/discussion/12dmN/the-truly-elitist-sg-patrons
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Well technically -2 hours is less than 2 weeks, right ? :D
But I swear I had not seen that discussion when I made this prediction. It's just part of human nature.
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If cg told us that contributions are needed to keep the site going, I'd be happy to donate. This doesn't seem to be the case, and since none of the features are of interest to me I'll not join any of these plans.
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and like I said - it's totally fine. And that's exactly why I believe sucxh rewards - that are mostly cosmetics (and ads you can disable with adblock anyway ;p) are perfect fit. You only become Patreon if you want to, not becoming Patreon because it has some features you would like to ahve access to.
I personally will probably donate when payment comes to my bank account - not because without us donating site will die, simply because I believe cg did awesome job creating this website I spent thousands of hours on, and I simply believe that if some group of people want to pay him for work he's done it's totally fine. And other people who don't want to are also totally fine not doing so ;)
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it was already discussed - any rewards that would denefit you directly on SG were vastly voted against, with cg himself not wanting anything like that, having just cosmetic changes.
I didn't see any vote about that. I may have miss that...
If you had priority on support tickets for users who wait days and weeks for replies it may look unfair, you would have consiracy theories (tickets are so slow, because cg wants to force us to donate) all over forums right away.
That's the whole point. There's not even a need to speculate to create a conspiracy theory about that.
Also, if you can't trust in support work without paying, like now, why would you pay?
(edit was here to fix poor english)
And exclusive area would quickly become "pay2win" because you can be sure that very quickly a lot of Donators would start sharing exclusive private GAs only there.
Simple rule against that, problem solved.
And again - Donation should not affect chance of wins or opportunities to win in any way.
I really don't have a clue where did you get that.
Patreon is only for those who simply want to support website they love, not for you to get any kind of advantage on SG.
That's the last line of my comment, misrepresented by cg I must add when he presented Patreon as subscribe to their favorite content creators and services.
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I didn't see any vote about that. I may have miss that...You sis, before this change there was a topic running for quite a while discussing it: https://www.steamgifts.com/discussion/bJMzI/patreon-reward-suggestions
That's the whole point. There's no even speculation to create a conspiracy theory about that.
Also, if you can't trust in support work without paying, like now, why would you pay?That's why not having Patreon reward for priority is a good thing. You decide they don't deserve pay, because you don't trust them? Don't pay. From your non-trusting position it should be better option than being forced to pay just to be sure that your tickets will be solved.
Simple rule against that, problem solved.Simple rule requiring moderation, resulting in even more support work, even longer response timers on tickets and so on and on.
misrepresented by cgI really don't see where do you have misrepresentation here. Rewards are purely cosmetics, not donating will not change a thing for your SG experience, so you subscribe only if you want to support cg and what he is doing. If you don't it's totally fine as well.
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Well, I was right, there were no votation about that. Also, about the ticket thing, again, that's the whole point one more time.
About the exclusive area, there's no need to moderate when you know how to program. I'm also kinda amazed how you concluded that "donators" will do that often to create "even longer" and "so on and on" effects. It isn't everyday that you expect the unexpected became normal, specially when it is against rules. I think I don't even need to mention that moderate there is a well expended resourse, because, you know, donations.
About the end, I must tell you that is not what I'm talking about at all. I didn't mention or mean anything about users decisions to donate or not donate. That's way too far from my subject to discuss that right now.
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no poll =/= no votation. Anyone was free to voice their comments, suggestions and what they think about an idea in general in said thread. So don't use it now as an excuse "oh, there was no poll, so no votation" - you as well as any user had a choice to "vote" (or voice your opinion, after all it's privately owned site, not a democracy where we vote for rules - otherwise most ppl would vote for "not having to activate wins" as most are lvl 0/1 bots who would love to regift/retrade wins).
there's no need to moderate when you know how to programyes there is, because any automatic program can and will be exploited to go around it if there is no moderation. You prohibit pasting GA links? I will paste GA codes. YYou wanna check every 5 letter word to make sure it's not a GA code? I will add special characters between letters, I will post picture and so on and on.
It isn't everyday that you expect the unexpected became normal, specially when it is against rules.Regifting or not activating your wins is against the rules, yet there are tens and tens of new reports for it every single day.
Not to mention the fact that such secret area would rise even more conspiracy theories. You can say rules don't allow GAs for donators only, yet all non-donators will ofc know better, especially as they've never seen said area.
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There's not need to go further on this, but know the difference:
A votation, by its essence, is choose a option. A poll is just a tool to do a votation.
I think about the rest is covered by the "well spent resources because donations."
My point was really about a real "comeback" (I don't know the exact word to use here, sorry) to call it Patreon.
Otherwise, it is just a simple monthly donation misrepresented as Patreon in my point of view.
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A poll is a tool to do a voting, it does not mean the poll is the only tool possible to do it. I can make a poll with options "Yes" and "No" and use it to count votes. I can also ask people to wite in comments whether they agree or not, count these votes and it will be voting as well.
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Hi SG,
I'm excited to be sharing our Patreon with everyone today! If you're unaware of Patreon, it's a platform for users ("Patrons") to support and subscribe to their favorite content creators and services. Our Patreon is arranged into three reward tiers, and it offers a number of fun rewards without giving anyone an unfair advantage towards entering or winning giveaways. The reward tiers are as follows:
Outdoor Cat ($3/mo)
House Cat ($7/mo)
Space Cat ($15/mo)
Our Patreon covers all of the specifics, including further details about the rewards and how they can be redeemed after subscribing.
https://www.patreon.com/steamgifts
You'll also notice the Patreon button added to the account page of our site. This is where you can redeem your rewards as explained above.
https://www.steamgifts.com/account/settings/patreon
A big thanks to everyone, regardless of whether or not you decide to subscribe. It's been a lot of fun working on SteamGifts over the years. I hope to see the community continue to grow, and I'll keep doing my best to release new features and improvements for the years to come. Thanks!
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