3DX artists and fans may be interested to know that the popular crowdsourcing platform, Patreon, changed their site policies on adult content last week. At the time the changes were made, Patreon released a statement explaining how its community guidelines on prohibited content had been updated, expanded, and clarified.
Prior to October 17th, Patreon’s policy stated that nudity and sexual content were allowed, but pornography was not. Any images depicting the sexualization of children or the glorification of rape or sexual violence were also strictly forbidden. (Our own A. Guinness discussed the problems with this policy back in August.) The new policy adds bestiality to the list of strictly forbidden content, as well as “other fringe sexual fetish content, such as incest, necrophilia, or fetish content that is hard to distinguish from non-consensual sex.” In addition to this, they explained that Patreon cannot be used to “sell pornographic material or arrange sexual service(s) as a reward for your patrons. We define pornographic material as real people engaging in sexual acts such as masturbation or sexual intercourse on camera. You can’t use Patreon to raise funds in order to produce pornographic material such as maintaining a website, funding the production of movies, or providing a private webcam session.”
There’s a lot going on here, but first of all, how does this affect 3DX? Overall, it should only impact users creating bestiality or incest porn, and even then, the wording there could be interpreted as only targeting a very specific kind of porn where one party isn’t consenting. Gaming blog Kotaku reported that a few adult games featuring bestiality or incest were briefly taken down then put back up with only minor changes made to the creator’s public pages, with no visible changes to the creator’s actual content. [UPDATE: One of our users, Hun73Rdk, tipped us about a game creator, 3Diddly, who says he has been forced to remove the incest and non-consent elements from his game before it would be made available again. In the letter 3Diddly shares, Patreon specifically mentions that the content must be removed, and cannot simply be hosted on an external site if Patreon funds are being used to fund its creation. Unsure at this time if Patreon is enforcing this uniformly, but based on this new information and the accounts Kotaku reported, it’s a possibility. It’s also possible the crackdown is being rolled out overtime and creators not previously affected will be contacted soon. Please let us know if you come across any other creators affected in this way, or are a creator affected yourself.]
For now it doesn’t look like Patreon is out to shut down 3DX artists and fringe creators, rather it looks like they’re trying to clear out live action porn performers, and also clean up the appearance of fringe content that skirts the edge of acceptability. There was something Patreon said in their press release which stood out out to us: “We have to make judgment calls about where to draw the line between an individual creator’s right to use Patreon and Patreon’s ability to be a home for all creators.” This reads a lot like “our payment gateway told us we have a lot of high risk content on our site, and they’re going to start charging us the high risk fee on all transactions if we don’t clean it up.” (Don’t know about payment gateways and porn? A. Guinness has an article to explain that too.) That’s just our interpretation, mind you, but here at Affect3D we have a lot of experience dealing with the rules and guidelines of payment gateways and the things Patreon have suddenly clarified as being strictly forbidden are the same things we are forced to have strict rules about in order to stay in business.
It sounds like Patreon might have been able to strike a deal with their payment processors that allows them to keep distributing the “artistic stuff” — that is, the art, games, and animations, that take a lot of artistic and technical skill to create — as long as it doesn’t look too much like porn to the non-patron. All the stuff that looks explicitly like porn — the cam girls and amateur porn — however, has to go. There’s some theories floating around that the motivation to get rid of cam girls and porn performers may be to avoid being any sort of front for prostitution…This is a legitimate legal concern, but overall we think these changes are largely payment gateway motivated.
It should be noted that several adult performers addressed Patreon in an open letter, asking that Patreon take a more sex positive stance on porn so they could continue to use Patreon as a platform for their work. Why not use any number of sites already built for sharing and selling porn and cam shows? Once again, probably fees. The open letter doesn’t openly state it, but it does say this: “Porn is a multi-billion dollar industry mostly in the hands of well heeled men. You were helping us hold it in our own hands.” Now for the context: Patreon takes 5% commission from its creators, sites like MyFreeCams take 40% from performers, and even if an amateur producer sets up her own online store, she’d still have to pay a high risk fee on payment processing. Given the difference, it’s completely understandable that performers would want to use Patreon over a tailored porn site or their own setup. Unfortunately, Patreon seems adamant on not being a porn site, and have stuck to their guns on having always had rules against porn. It’s a shame that Patreon won’t be going up to bat for independent porn production, or maybe they did, and discovered they couldn’t win… Either way, there remains a massive hole in the market for someone to fill.
Let us know if you’ve been affected by the recent changes, and how, in the comments!
Hun73rdk
November 4, 2017https://www.patreon.com/posts/long-winded-rant-15204779
Hun73rdk
October 31, 2017This post
https://www.patreon.com/posts/patreon-got-back-15051046
Marie Fasolt
October 31, 2017Thanks for the link! Will update! =)
Hun73rdk
October 30, 2017You forgot to tell us that they are now forcing creators of games the change the game also
Marie Fasolt
October 30, 2017Do you have a link we can source on that? Happy to update the article but need a source =)
jack pinder
October 30, 2017Patreon is such a good idea with the 5% take acceptable to just about any artist. It’s squeaky new and has to struggle to find it’s path. Makes sense the platform will develop questionable polices and practices with the hungry porn industry looking to exploit the loop holes any way they can. Is CG 3DX classified as true porn? Are Orks, Goblins, Aliens and such now considered bestiality? Is it really a dog/horse if it is CG? Does Elfen ears make the female acceptable? According to who? The powers that be are at the mercy of a fickle public and bend to suit the times. Hard to find support there. Our champions tread a fine balanced line. Keep up the good work
Marie Fasolt
October 30, 2017With our own payment processor, orcs and goblins have always been okay, as are anthropomorphic animal creatures like lizard men and minotaurs. Any realistically rendered animals like a dog or horse is not okay. Furries would be okay too, but we don’t feature furry content simply because of personal taste.
It is interesting that our processor considers what we do to be porn, but Patreon has been able to get away with saying the same content isn’t… At least for now. I suspect one day it will change, so any artists using Patreon should be sure they have a backup plan.