Hey everyone! This is Cze. I want to explain a situation going on at Patreon. If you subscribe to other Patreon creators, you might have heard about this already, but basically due to a change in how the Apple store deals with in-app purchases Patreon was forced to change their business model. As part of that, they are discontinuing the 'per creation' model, which Czepeku currently uses, and are forcing us to switch to a per monthly model.

That change will occur at the end of this month for Czepeku Sci-Fi, and at the end of October for our Fantasy Maps and Scenes projects.

If you want to read more about this, you can see Patreon's article about it here: https://news.patreon.com/articles/understanding-apple-requirements-for-patreon

I'll put this in bold because it's very important:
If you're already a patron, there will be no changes to how much you are charged.

All current patrons will be locked into the current price they pay us each month for as long as they remain subscribed, so they won't see any difference at all.

If you're a current patron of ours and you're happy then there's nothing to worry about and all is good.

The rest of this post is my appeal to you that if you are happy with the work we create, and you have the time, to please consider instead supporting our work through czepeku.com.

We've been happy with our relationship with Patreon over the years. If this service hadn't been around we'd never have been able to get started doing this work. But we've now outgrown Patreon. As we can see from this situation with Apple, we have very little control over what we do here, and fundamental elements of our business model can be changed without our input. That's a very scary situation. Last year, a friend of ours, RPG composer Michael Ghelfi, had his Patreon account wrongly suspended for a week, with no explanation or forewarning. That's not something anyone can build a business around.

We want to build out more projects, hire more artists and continue all the great work we have over the years. And for us czepeku.com gives us that control and freedom. We're able to provide a better service and we receive a bigger cut of your payment. And for most of our patrons it will be cheaper for you as well.

There are already exclusive animated variants, and other bonuses like UVTT files, that you get if you subscribe through czepeku.com. I won't go into all of those now, I'll write a separate post about that in future. Instead of winning you over with added content and features, I'd prefer to appeal to you emotionally: if you like our work and you want to help us create more fantastic projects, to expand our team and pay them better, then please consider switching from Patreon to czepeku.com.

You can use the discount code CATSHARK26 for 20% off your first 12 months. If you also connect your Patreon account, you'll retain a 10% lifetime discount and it'll also help us to track your total lifetime support. We'll include that when we begin Lifetime Rewards on czepeku.com.

Whether you decide to remain a patron or switch over to czepeku: thank you so much for your support. It really does mean the world to us. We love this job and couldn't do it without your support.

<3 - Cze and Peku (and the rest of the team!)