[Subscribe Button] Now Live

[Marstead]

The Affiliate Subscribe button is now live on Twitch! Here's a quick FAQ on what to expect.

• I'm an existing subscriber on Patreon. What should I do?
• To keep your current perks, I would prefer for most folks (who are able to) to move as much of their sub as possible from Patreon to Twitch. After subscribing on Twitch, you'll keep your current Subscriber Perks even if you cancel the same amount on your Patreon pledge.
• If you're unable or otherwise unwilling to move any or all of your pledge to Twitch, that's okay too. Patreon-only users will be treated the same as folks who move to Twitch. 
• I'm an existing Patreon subscriber and I have Twitch Prime. Can I cancel my Patreon pledge and replace it with Twitch Prime?
• If you're an existing subscriber, I strongly urge you NOT to switch to using Twitch Prime alone. Twitch Prime does not automatically resub each month, and it will greatly complicate your Sub Perks if you're subscribed by this method alone. If you do throw a Twitch Prime sub my way on top of an existing Patreon sub, your total Sub Perk tier will be increased (this is easier to track than whether or not you have perks at all). I technically won't be disallowing people from canceling on Patreon and switching to Twitch Prime, but I do strongly urge against it if you're financially able, at least until Twitch makes it possible to automatically resub with Twitch Prime (if this ever becomes a thing).
• I subscribe for an amount higher than the maximum Twitch allows. How does that work?
• You can split your sub between Twitch & Patreon for the full Patreon tier. Right now, you can get the $5 and $10 tiers just by subbing on Twitch alone. 
• The $15 tier would require an additional $5 sub on Patreon to get the maximum SP Multiplier without going to $24.99 for the Permanent Game Slot.
• What's going to happen the Patreon Milestones as a result of this change?
• I won't be able to host them on Patreon anymore. Instead, I will probably set up a public Milestone document at http://tasks.marstead.com and make a subdomain for it. It will combine sub totals from Twitch & Patreon. The goals will remain the same
• Milestones will not be changing due to the larger cut Twitch takes from subscriptions. They were already unaffected by the Patreon cut, and won't be affected by Twitch's cut.
• What's going to happen to the existing Patreon Reward Tiers?
• I'll be revising all of the reward tier thresholds on Patreon to match costs on Twitch:
• $01.00 Tier --> $00.99
• $05.00 Tier --> $04.99
• $10.00 Tier --> $09.99
• $15.00 Tier --> $14.99
• $30.00 Tier --> $24.99
• Since this will make the Permanent Game Slot tier cheaper, I understand if a lot of the $30 subs decide to drop their total support down to $24.99. I'm hopeful Twitch will eventually let folks just enter any pledge value above $5 in the future. I would definitely appreciate folks keeping $5 of their sub on Patreon in this case -- you'll continue to benefit from the monthly bonus SP for subscription, which is affected by your SP Multiplier (and which starts to become a pretty major source of SP above ~$25).
• Folks who sub on Twitch get the additional benefit of a native Twitch subscriber chat badge. I might try to add some (extremely mild) unique benefit for folks who are subbed on Patreon, to give an extra boost to the folks who choose to stay on both platforms (and make the sting less severe for folks who want to stay at $30.00 total). But I have no idea what that'd be yet. 
• As mentioned above, your effective reward tier will equal your Patreon pledge level plus your Twitch subscription level.
• How are you going to handle new people who subscribe only with Twitch Prime?
• These users will be treated the same as every other $4.99 subscriber. However, I'm going to have to adjust the Sub Block system a little bit to account for the fact that Twitch Prime subs do not recur automatically. The system will work effectively the same way for traditional subscribers, but will probably modify the "Last Draw" value to account for the fact that we can't be sure Twitch Prime subs will recur immediately. Stay tuned this weekend for a detailed email on how I'll be handling that.
• What's the deal with Sub Emotes?
• We get 3 sub emotes, one for each tier on Twitch ($4.99, $9.99, $24.99). I'm working with folks to try to put something good together. It looks like we're allowed to upload a placeholder emote and then replace it with something else later, so I might put up a simple text emote temporarily. It'll take a few weeks even after uploading the placeholder for the emote to be approved and ready for use, but I'll give everyone a heads-up as this process moves forward.

If you have any other questions, feel free to reach out to me on Discord.

Thanks!

-Dylan ("Marstead")

[Marstead]

Hey everyone! I'm wrapping up some work related to the new Subscribe Button.

• Subscriber Database: I've gone through and compiled a single document that should list all subscribers across Patreon, Twitch, & Twitch Prime. You can find it at http://tasks.marstead.com on the "Subscriber Database" tab. Since Twitch now publicizes this information in Twitch chat whenever someone subscribes or renews their sub, and because it's already derivable from the monthly SP bonuses (which are disbursed in public chat), I've made this information public here for convenience and tracking. If anyone has any privacy concerns with their total sub amount being public, please reach out to me via Discord DM.
• Although this information has always been public (in that it was pretty easy to figure out by looking at the Sub Block list, pledge total, SP Disbursements, etc), it's now much more obvious. I would still request folks to show courtesy to fellow subscribers and not discuss their subscription amounts without their permission, especially if amounts change in either direction from month to month. It's okay to celebrate when people renew or upgrade their subscriptions, but after that initial welcome and celebration, please don't ever pressure anyone to subscribe, resubscribe, increase their sub amount, add a supplementary Twitch Prime subscription, etc.

• Update Rate & Perk Confirmation: My plan right now is to update this document once a month, usually around the 10th of each month after all Patreon billing is completed and declines are reprocessed. Updating the document in this case will include confirming all Sub Perks are active for all subscribers according to their subscriber tier. Note that Twitch & Twitch Prime subs don't rebill on a preset date, it's based on the date of the original subscription. Rather than make this a daily task I have to manage, I'll only be reviewing the Perks once a month all at once, so if anyone's Twitch or Twitch Prime sub lapses in that window I'll have to make corrections retroactively.
• I still intend to activate new sub perks immediately: usually within 1 day of the new subscription activating.
• I plan to update the "Last Review" tab on the date I confirm all perks are active -- you can check this for yourself to confirm that you have the right multiplier, active SFX, etc. I'd like to wrap up perk confirmation later tonight, but if some of my other tasks run late, we'll definitely get to it by the 10th of July.

• Sub Block Impact: I've added a column for "SubBlock Mod". This number equals the number of days a subscription lapses such that the total subscription is less than $4.99. In other words, this should be zero for just about everyone, but for folks who subscribe only via Twitch Prime, this number could go up a bit if it takes awhile for them to manually reactive their Prime subscription each month. If a subscription lapses but is later reactivated, this modifier will be subtracted from the "Days Since" column on the Sub Block spreadsheet, which will effectively slow the rate at which subscribers with temporarily-lapsed subscriptions are drawn for Sub Block compared to subscribers with continuous subscriptions.
• This will only start to tick up if a user's only subscription method lapses in this way. If you're subbed both via Twitch Prime & Patreon and you forget to renew your Twitch Prime sub, you wouldn't accrue any days here.

• Monthly Newsletter: Unfortunately, Twitch's services for viewing your subscriber database and contacting subscribers are extremely barebones. All that they offer is a *.csv file emailed to me with a list of subscribers, and a one-click button to e-mail all subscribers at once. I've currently been sending out a Monthly Newsletter on Patreon that summarizes what we've been up to lately. It's going to cause more spam for folks who are both Patreon & Twitch subscribers, but starting this month, I'll be duplicating this to both Patreon subscribers and Twitch subscribers. You may be able to deactivate notifications on one platform or the other to avoid the duplicate mail. Thanks for your patience; I am hopeful that with the influx of Affiliates, Twitch works on adding better tools for this in the future.

• Sub Perk List: I've previously been able to host the Perk List off-site on Patreon, but that doesn't make sense if the first point of signup is on Twitch now. I wanted to avoid spamming the Panels area with more information, but this is critical enough that I will probably need to add a panel just for Sub Perks. Keep an eye on this to show up below the stream sometime later this week; you can point interested folks to it in the future.

• Discord Role: Discord has automatic Subscriber role integration for Twitch, if your Discord username is connected to your Twitch username. I've gone ahead and activated this for our server. 
• One subscriber requested to be able to adjust their Discord role color, which changes your username when chatting in Discord. There's a way to set up a bot to offer this but it's way too complicated for the small number of subscribers who have this concern. Instead, I can set this manually. If you'd like a manual color adjustment based on one of the colors you have available to you, deactivate the automatic role syncing with Patreon and send me a Discord DM with the color you'd like. Here are the tiers:
• Dark Green: Regulars
• Light Purple: Twitch & Twitch Prime subscribers 
• Light Green: >= $0.99
  
• Light Blue: >= $4.99
• Yellow: >= $9.99
• Red: >= $14.99
• Dark Purple: >= $24.99

Thanks!

-Dylan ("Marstead")

[Marstead]

Hey everyone!

One additional change to Sub Block, regarding future Twitch Prime subscribers.

Starting in August, I'll be updating the rules slightly. This is in addition to the rule covering what happens if a Prime sub lapses temporarily:

• Effective 08/01/2017, Twitch Prime subscribers must renew their subscription at least once before being added to the Sub Block spreadsheet.
• Now that we've seen how the Sub Button works, it may occur that someone might casually "throw" their Twitch Prime sub at the channel as a one-time thing, without really intending to return and watch again later.
• Sub Block is configured assuming ongoing support, so this sort of one-time support would muck up the gears a bit (the equivalent of getting Sub Block for a $5.00 donation). This change should correct for that.
• Once a Twitch Prime sub is added to the spreadsheet and drawn for Sub Block after renewing once, their Draw date will be backdated by 30 days to account for having to wait longer than other subs.
• The intent with this rule change is not to punish new Twitch Prime subs for not subscribing through other methods, but to keep Sub Block from being cluttered by folks who will only ever use Twitch Prime once.
• This rule change will not affect existing new Twitch Prime subscribers who have already been added to the Sub Block sheet.
• This rule change will not affect existing subscribers who change their support method to Twitch Prime in the future.

Not a rule change, but given that we've had an unusual one-time infusion of a ton of new subscribers thanks to the new Subscribe Button, I'll also temporarily be adjusting the Sub Block logic:

• Existing Logic: Only one new subscriber will be drawn for Sub Block at a time. The other two slots go to existing subs who were already in the rotation.
• Temporary Logic: Until we clear out all of the ~8 new subs from the Sub Button go-live, I'll be drawing two new subscribers for Sub Block when possible. The third slot will always be an existing sub already in the rotation.
• Once the ~8 subs are cleared out (so sometime in August, probably) we'll revert to drawing 1 new sub and 2 existing subs.

I've added this rule change to the new Subscriber Perks document linked in the Channel Panels below the stream.