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Facebook wants up to 30% of fan subscriptions vs Patreon’s 5%

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Re: Facebook wants up to 30% of fan subscriptions vs Patreon’s 5%

#41

Post by chillacy »

ardy42 wrote: post #14
Deimorz wrote: post #11

I don't understand why people are acting like this is ridiculous and will obviously fail. 30% is the same cut that Apple and Google take for everything that goes through their app stores, including all in-app purchases. It's the same cut that Steam takes. It's the same cut that YouTube takes for channel membership. Twitch takes an even larger cut: 50% from subscriptions. It's extremely well-established that people ar…

Those cuts are egregiously large, IMHO. Those platforms should be hacked into pieces until competition forces them to fall (or have their pricing regulated like a utility's).

I have a mac app which is exclusively available on the App Store, so I pay 30% of my revenue to Apple. I could spin up my own system but then I have to build out payments (credit card processing fees), distribution, updates, beta testing, and figure out discoverability. In the end, my app isn't big enough to build these things out myself, but at least if I wanted to I could. Different story on iOS.

Re: Facebook wants up to 30% of fan subscriptions vs Patreon’s 5%

#42

Post by vntok »

liability wrote: post #4

This seems like the sort of thing that could only move forward at a company like Facebook. If this were proposed as an independent business, it would be laughed out of the room. Of course Facebook has enough loyal users that they might actually be able to make this work..

Why would it be laughed out of the room?

FYI, here's the current top comment in this very thread:

> 30% is the same cut that Apple and Google take for everything that goes through their app stores, including all in-app purchases. It's the same cut that Steam takes. It's the same cut that YouTube takes for channel membership. Twitch takes an even larger cut: 50% from subscriptions. It's extremely well-established that people are comfortable with platforms taking that large of a portion.

Re: Facebook wants up to 30% of fan subscriptions vs Patreon’s 5%

#43

Post by Deimorz »

metildaa wrote: post #36
pravda wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but Apple and Google have monopolies. Not a "gamer", so I don't really know what "Steam" is/does, but I suspect they must have some kind of moat. I'm not sure that people are comfortable with Patreon taking a 10% cut. I'm not happy about eBay taking a 10% cut, but they have a monopoly. Jack Ma, please bring Taobao to USA!

Valve cut their fees to 15% recently for games that sell well, and reduced the normal fee from 30% iirc. Epic Games has brought serious competition to the industry, offering a broadly used game distribution channel for a low price.

No, the normal fee is still 30%, and the reduction is only for extremely high-sales games and never goes below 20%:

> Starting from October 1, 2018 (i.e. revenues prior to that date are not included), when a game makes over $10 million on Steam, the revenue share for that application will adjust to 75%/25% on earnings beyond $10M. At $50 million, the revenue share will adjust to 80%/20% on earnings beyond $50M.

(https://steamcommunity.com/groups/steamworks/announcements/d...)

The Epic store really isn't much of a competitor at all yet, the only reason it's having any impact at all is because they've been paying developers to release exclusively on the Epic store.

Re: Facebook wants up to 30% of fan subscriptions vs Patreon’s 5%

#44

Post by JimDabell »

Deimorz wrote: post #11

I don't understand why people are acting like this is ridiculous and will obviously fail. 30% is the same cut that Apple and Google take for everything that goes through their app stores, including all in-app purchases. It's the same cut that Steam takes. It's the same cut that YouTube takes for channel membership. Twitch takes an even larger cut: 50% from subscriptions. It's extremely well-established that people ar…

> 30% is the same cut that Apple and Google take for everything that goes through their app stores, including all in-app purchases.

Both Apple and Google drop subscriptions to 15% after the first year.

Re: Facebook wants up to 30% of fan subscriptions vs Patreon’s 5%

#46

Post by aaronbrethorst »

I wonder if Facebook will be able to pay content creators on time. Might be worth a significant drop in revenue to some folks who depend on services like Patreon in order to pay rent if they're able to at least get their money when they're supposed to get it.

https://twitter.com/ericacbarnett/status/1100809443422302208

Re: Facebook wants up to 30% of fan subscriptions vs Patreon’s 5%

#47

Post by pravda »

koonsolo wrote: post #34
pravda wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but Apple and Google have monopolies. Not a "gamer", so I don't really know what "Steam" is/does, but I suspect they must have some kind of moat. I'm not sure that people are comfortable with Patreon taking a 10% cut. I'm not happy about eBay taking a 10% cut, but they have a monopoly. Jack Ma, please bring Taobao to USA!

The alternative is always to offer your content from your own website, and take 100%. The game developers who were around before Steam, know how much that costs (promotion wise), and know they get a lot for that 30% cut. The same is true for those other platforms. You seem to be a person that expects all internet platforms offer their stuff for free. And another thing: all of those platforms mentioned have competitor…

>You seem to be a person that expects all internet platforms offer their stuff for free.

Oh gosh, no! I expect them to offer their stuff at the profit-maximizing percentage.

That's the whole point of having a monopoly, so you can charge monopoly rents.

Now I am curious about this "Steam" thing. Looks like there is an about page: https://store.steampowered.com/about/

Re: Facebook wants up to 30% of fan subscriptions vs Patreon’s 5%

#48

Post by antiviral »

Deimorz wrote: post #21
gamblor956 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem isn't the %. It's the perpetual IP license, which grants Facebook complete non exclusive rights to the Creator's IP, including licensing it to third parties without further pay to the Creator.

Patreon requires you to grant them an extremely similar license: > You keep full ownership of all content that you post on Patreon, but to operate we need licenses from you. > By posting content to Patreon you grant us a royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive, sublicensable, worldwide license to use, reproduce, distribute, perform, publicly display or prepare derivative works of your content. The purpose…

It also states that it's for the purpose of promoting the creator's content on Patreon. For example, showing a thumbnail image of your video on another page as a recommendation would count as a 'derivative work.' Without this right, it would be virtually impossible to get permission from the creator for every instance in which Patreon wants to promote content in a new way. Also, it seems that the creator on Patreon would continue to benefit when Patreon earns value on the content.

Facebook, on the other hand, has numerous ways to benefit that don't proportionally benefit the creator, including from indirect revenue sources like advertising and data enrichment that don't flow back to the creator in any way. I suppose this is alright when you are just showing cat photos to your family, but it's quite different when you are basing your business on someone else's market-dominating platform with large negotiating leverage. And there are known cases where Facebook has been known to very liberally appropriate ideas from companies that are competitive with them (e.g., Snapchat).

Re: Facebook wants up to 30% of fan subscriptions vs Patreon’s 5%

#49

Post by on_and_off »

pravda wrote: post #17
Deimorz wrote: post #11

I don't understand why people are acting like this is ridiculous and will obviously fail. 30% is the same cut that Apple and Google take for everything that goes through their app stores, including all in-app purchases. It's the same cut that Steam takes. It's the same cut that YouTube takes for channel membership. Twitch takes an even larger cut: 50% from subscriptions. It's extremely well-established that people ar…

Yes, but Apple and Google have monopolies. Not a "gamer", so I don't really know what "Steam" is/does, but I suspect they must have some kind of moat. I'm not sure that people are comfortable with Patreon taking a 10% cut. I'm not happy about eBay taking a 10% cut, but they have a monopoly. Jack Ma, please bring Taobao to USA!

It should be mentioned that Steam's monopoly is assulted by new players like Epic with a 12% cut.

Which might be for the best, Steam is in dire need of a serious competitor (I know GOG and co exist but sadly they have not been able to make a real dent in Steam's marketshare).

Steam has dropped so many balls and the main thing going for them is inertia.

Also, just because paying a large cut to various middlemen is common does not mean it is ok.

Re: Facebook wants up to 30% of fan subscriptions vs Patreon’s 5%

#50

Post by hevi_jos »

koonsolo wrote: post #34
pravda wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but Apple and Google have monopolies. Not a "gamer", so I don't really know what "Steam" is/does, but I suspect they must have some kind of moat. I'm not sure that people are comfortable with Patreon taking a 10% cut. I'm not happy about eBay taking a 10% cut, but they have a monopoly. Jack Ma, please bring Taobao to USA!

The alternative is always to offer your content from your own website, and take 100%. The game developers who were around before Steam, know how much that costs (promotion wise), and know they get a lot for that 30% cut. The same is true for those other platforms. You seem to be a person that expects all internet platforms offer their stuff for free. And another thing: all of those platforms mentioned have competitor…

You will be taking 100% of nothing… Because no traffic will visit your page versus Google's or Apple's traffic.

In the same way you can put a store in a rural place, or you could put in in New York 5th Avenue with warrantied traffic.

And of course that 100% does not take into account your cost of hosting, creating or adapting the necessary infrastructure and maintenance.

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