Last week, Patreon announced that it would be applying a new service fee to patron’s individual pledges. Today, after receiving plenty of feedback from creators and patrons who strongly disliked the fee change, Patreon apologized and decided not to roll out its fee change.
CEO and cofounder of Patreon, Jack Conte, wrote a post titled “We messed up. We’re sorry, and we’re not rolling out the fees change.” If you are on Patreon, you probably received this post in your email.
We’ve heard you loud and clear. We’re not going to rollout the changes to our payments system that we announced last week. We still have to fix the problems that those changes addressed, but we’re going to fix them in a different way, and we’re going to work with you to come up with the specifics, as we should have done the first time around. Many of you lost patrons, and you lost income. No apology will make up for that, but nevertheless, I’m sorry. It is our core belief that you should own the relationship with your fans. These are your businesses, and they are your fans.
Jack Conte pointed out that “Your feedback has been crystal clear.”
- The new payments system disproportionately impacted $1 – $2 patrons. We have to build a better system for them.
- Aggregation is highly-valued, and we understand that.
- Fundamentally, creators should own the business decisions with their fans, not Patreon. We overstepped our bounds and injected ourselves into that relationship, against our core belief as a business.
Jack Conte also acknowledged that it will take a long time to earn back the trust of creators and patrons. He states that Patreon is “utterly devoted to your success and to getting you sustainable, reliable income for being a creator.” It remains to be seen whether or not this apology will bring back the creators and patrons who left Patreon specifically because of the fee change.