Free games listings for subscribers pulled

While my last update stated that I was adding additional benefits to the channel, I've realized that the termination of the Patreon page was likely a targeted attack on my channel & therefore am also pulling one of the benefits from the channel, this being the same one that I expect was used as a basis to get Patreon to terminate my account.  I find it highly unlikely that my Patreon page would get terminated only days after I started streaming again & I can think of at least 3 individuals that have aggressively attacked my channel in the past (these 3 really only being the tip of the iceberg, there were many others that have been banned from my channel in the past for smaller attacks) & because it appears the game giveaway listings were the basis on this possible attack, that benefit is getting pulled until I can get to the bottom of it (which in all honestly, I doubt I will be able to get to the bottom of, seeing as Patreon is taking the "block & ignore" approach to the situation after this case of creator victimization, which if my assumption is accurate, upgrades the situation to a matter of revictimization).

2 of the individuals I believe could have been capable of this were also Twitch streamers (their channels kind of dead as of late, but still Twitch streamers that had Partnership status...which I find ironic that individuals with that type of disposition are rewarded for bad behavior...) when their organized attacks against my channel started (one of those I have a recording from their own channel where they are organizing one of these attacks with friends over his Discord & viewers in his Twitch stream, making false reports against my YouTube channel after they found it, first taking time to search it out while still live on his own channel), the 3rd individual not expected to have the brainpower for this (a young & very childish individual) that has only managed to get himself banned over multiple Twitch accounts in many of the channels that I was supporting with hosts (and that also supported me as a streamer; that individual literally following through the hosts on my channel to attack me by name with false information in those channels for years & I have IRC logs to back up that statement over many of those known attacks, known meaning there are probably many others I'm not even aware of; at least 6 Twitch accounts that I know of were banned from other channels in attacks through this same manner, as well as a few failed attacks on my own Discord that were mostly foiled by the locks I have in place to prevent such attacks on it, resulting in bans on each of those accounts from my own Discord & eventually managing to get himself banned from the Official Fortnite Discord after I brought these attacks & the logged history of those attacks to the attention of one of their moderators).

In any case, I may bring this benefit back if I ever get to the bottom of who was behind it (already expect I know who it was, but currently unable to prove it, not that his nature of gloating, along with his friends being too verbal for their own good will eventually get that out in the open, at which point I'll be taking him to court for damages cause by slander, or at least whoever was responsible once I figure out who it was), being highly unlike that Patreon is going to reverse their decision on the matter given their reactions on Facebook against my own Facebook account, as well as their refusal to respond to  email responses sent to them over the support ticket opened when they emailed the account closure notice, but this benefit could also be brought back if Patreon has a change of heart (although my opinion of Patreon at this point is they have a heart of ice, not expecting that to thaw out any time soon).

Request-based StreamElements store purchases

In response to Patreon's termination of my creator page & the expected discontinuation of streams to my Twitch channel (when cuts on expenses need to be made again due to the cutoff from Patreon funding), I am offering another option to purchasing from the StreamElements store with points gained by supporting (or simply viewing/lurking) the channel.

Originally, I had the StreamElements store set to only allow purchases from it when a stream was running (this was to help mitigate possible abuse of the one-time follower bonus).  However if live streams end due to lack of funds to be able to afford internet service with a high enough rate to even be able to stream single player games, that option won't be available anymore & all points gained will go to waste...

For this reason, I am now allowing a request-based purchase option where people can contact me in order to purchase from the store on request.  These requests can be done over Twitch (if I am following you or have you on my friend list, otherwise a whisper over Twitch will be blocked) or over Discord (you can get my contact by simply joining my Discord, however in order to be able to interact with the channels on the Discord server, you will first need to verify who you are, as it's locked up pretty tight to prevent attacks on it, which has already been proven to be the right decision on past attacks that didn't affect the server when they happened, only directly through DMs until they were blocked & reported).  On request, I'll simply deduct the points from your total & provide the activation key via private message over the form of contact made to make the request.

NOTICE:  Some of these keys are pretty old & it's possible they may have expired.  In the event that something like this happens, I provide a guarantee of refunding the points spent on the key should the key not be functional.  Unfortunately we're both out on the game if a key has expired, but I'm not going to hold a viewer responsible for this if they were committed enough to the channel to have the points to purchase one of these keys, they will get back what was spent in full should this ever be an issue.

Updates to channel bonuses:

I have finished setting back up the tipping system on StreamElements to allow for another means of supporting the channel (if you don't want to pay for cheers directly through the channel or want to be able to support it while not streaming).  Note however the return in points is a lot higher through cheers directly on Twitch (literally 1 point per bit cheered, there is no fee deduction being taken into account here), so it's better to cheer directly through Twitch if you have the option to do so (I just suggest that you don't do this through mobile apps, the costs are usually higher as those mobile apps provide a cut towards the app platforms, which usually gets included in the cost to obtain them).

Unfortunately with the cutoff from Patreon, subscriptions can only be done on Twitch itself (and the return in points is usually less than half of that of the cost of the subscription; points gained from a subscription are based on calculated revenue towards a payout by Twitch).  However subs are necessary if we want to unlock more emotes on the channel (even without subs, there are still cheer emotes that will still be available to those that have reached that amount in cheering, even if they aren't subscribing when they want to use them), so I'm going to set up an incentive for subscriptions on Twitch to reward those that may get us over the threshold for more emotes on the channel.  This new incentive will be that if we reach the unlock point on subscriptions for a new emote, I will give an additional 300 points to all active subs at the time a new emote slot is unlocked (this bonus would actually give more points back than spent on the sub once combined with the standard sub bonus).  Of course 300 points would only cover a tier 1 sub, higher tiers would give a larger bonus upon emote unlock, but considering I haven't received any subs higher than a Prime sub (which is a flat rate of 250 points return on sub, these are always higher than a paid sub), I have nothing to compare it to to calculate how much the bonus would be (should I have a value in the future, I will determine how much that bonus will be).

Patreon makes it clear, account termination is final

When I woke up on 7/22/2021, I checked some of my previous posts regarding the Patreon account termination & found that Patreon decided to take counter-measures against them on Facebook, this came in the result of not only deletion of the comments, but also a BLOCK on my account to comment on their page.  I already expected comment deletions, this is why I kept backups (all except the comments regarding the video response of their actions).  The posts I had backed up to this point were as you can see here:

While I expected I would need to create a testing account on Facebook to verify the deletion of the comments (noticing that I couldn't see any other comments on that post either while logged into my account), I attempted to do so through a Firefox private browser (the same method I use for embedding Twitch chat into my videos, since Twitch discontinued functionality in Internet Explorer), which verified that it wasn't a full wipe of comments on the post, but my comments directly (with what appeared 2 other posts from other individuals were also deleted or outright blocked, as the post count was at 3 posts before I made my comment, which means 2 others were not showing):

It wasn't until I looked at the mobile app on my phone that I realized they had also blocked my ability to react to their post on Facebook, so pretty much a full block (at least as far as business pages are capable of on Facebook):

This is the first time EVER I have seen a business page (of course I can't really consider Patreon as a business anymore, so I'm using this term extremely loosely at this point) do something like this.  It made one thing BLATENTLY clear however, they had no intention in backtracking on their decision to terminate the account, so I was going to have to go through with what I stated in that response to their email, as well as many other publications that was posted prior; it was time to start publishing Patreon reviews & boycotts to my personal site...

Of course to truly verify that this was a block (and not just disabling those options for everyone), I would have to create a new testing account on Facebook to verify the removal of the comment & reaction functions were indeed only affecting my account, something I didn't feel like it was worth the effort to get done, at least not until the new publications were up on my personal site.  Clearly I have no intentions in sharing anything of theirs anywhere on the web (unless it were to mock them, which I'm not going to lower myself to that level of childishness, stating the facts is enough to get the word out without having to be immature about it), so with the lack of functionality on the page in it's current state (even if it is assigned by account), I decided it was time to add this business page to my business block list:

One other thing of note is that the reviews that were previously mentioned in the video embedded in the past post to this blog (the response to Patreon over their decision to terminate the account), I still have the ability to delete or revise those reviews myself (even the BBB review once published), but I fully expect rather than Patreon attempting to correct this issue, they will instead look to retaliate through forced removals & account penalizations (of course this will result in further publications to my personal site when they happen).  While it's clear they are not going to reverse their decision by their actions on Facebook, if I see they do make amends for their mistake, the boycotts can be removed, however reviews to my personal site NEVER get removed, only updated if something in that situation changes (which would explain why trying to print some of them would result in over 50 pages being printed on a single review, which doesn't say much as videos can't be printed to paper, only their digital representation, not the content in the video itself).

UPDATE:  I made one final attempt to see if they had anything to say about this & whether any attempt has been made to reconsider their actions, this came in the form of a final email on the same support ticket they opened when they terminated the account:

UPDATE:  Additional contacts were made to individuals that created an account specifically for the purpose of supporting my channel through Patreon (luckily I had 3 forms of contact outside of Patreon for the one individual I know did this), informing them of what had happened & that if they weren't supporting any other individuals on that platform, they might as well deactivate their account (better than giving Patreon the chance to abuse the payment information that is still on there, not that I expect deletion of those accounts would fully remove it; publications of hacking of sites with payment information would prove that even information on deleted accounts could still be compromised if still in the site's logs).

Patreon account closure, "claimed" violation of ToS

As I was going over proofreading of the last post, I got an email from Patreon stating that they were closing my creator page under the claim of violation of ToS:

Note that certain details have been censored in this screenshot of the email

 

The expectation of this action is they were looking at what was being supplied directly over Patreon (the game giveaways) & not at the offsite content that the page was originally created for (namely, my Twitch channel).

Even though I was intending on doing a stream, this closure of my Patreon creator page (as well as the negation of funds & rewards that would have been assigned by account for funds that were donated to other creators on Patreon, an indirect penalty after the actions that were taking against my creator page, seeing as they were on the same account) sidetracked my plans to do that stream on Twitch & instead I spent over an hour writing & proofreading the response you see below before sending it to them:

Note that certain details have been censored in this screenshot of the email

In this response to Patreon, I stated that the benefits were better if subscribing to my Twitch channel through Patreon rather than directly through Twitch.  The reason for this was you got 1 channel point (via StreamElements) per cent spent on Patreon (while I was considering lowering this in response to transfer fees, I never did take this step), where you only got what was calculated as streamer revenue on Twitch (which was less than 50% of a Twitch subscription unless it was a Prime subscription, Prime subscriptions gave a flat rate of 250 points back for a tier 1 subscription; Twitch cheers still gave 1 points per bit cheered, there was no deduction here).  Additionally, if you were paying an additional $5 over what a subscription would cost on Twitch, you were allowed to request a gift subscription (from myself) to the channel (which gave more points back over subscribing directly to the channel over Twitch, seeing as gift subs gave a higher cut towards the streamer than a paid sub paid directly by the viewer).

With the termination of the creator page, the final month's perk of being able to request a gift sub is also negated, however points gained by those that were supporting the channel through Patreon will remain on those accounts (with no deductions or lowered rate prior to termination of the account).

Even though specific details were given regarding offsite perks in the response to their termination email, I doubt there will be any reversal in their decision, so all that will remain at this point will be the lower point rewards on direct subs to the channel (as well as tips through StreamElements once I get my account set up for them again, which will be lower points back than cheering directly on Twitch).

On the off-chance that Patreon does decide to backtrack their decision & choose to reinstate the account, I will be making changes that should have been done some time ago, that meaning that points back to subscribers over Patreon will be taking a cut to account for transfer & collection fees (points back to subscribers will still be higher than it would be for subscriptions directly on Twitch however...that is, if Patreon realizes they made a mistake in their decision & choose to reinstate the account, not that I expect they would with the response I sent them).

While the response to their team only details what was to be expected on my personal site, this blog & my channels, it did not detail other publications that I'm intending on publishing once the main articles are published to my personal site (with all evidence I can gather together regarding what has happened, as well as their part in supporting creators committing illegal activities & have yet to be held accountable for their actions...).  There are plenty of other sites that also allow reviews from the public (Google Maps, Google Play, the Better Business Bureau, the Federal Communications Commission, among others that may come later).  They have a choice at this point to look at the additional information that has been provided to them thus far & take another look at whether their actions were correct, otherwise their actions will be made a public matter to inform the public as such, which I can only expect a cover-up to hide these facts, which will only result in further publications in response to their actions, only to lead to what I can expect as building distrust of the Patreon platform, which will only lead to less income for them through those creators (as well as possibly an ultimate shutdown of the platform).

Remember Patreon is a platform that benefits by providing a funding platform for "creators", however in providing this platform, they also pull the reigns on who is considered a "creator" through restrictions they set, even if the termination of those that were following the rules are a misunderstanding on their part where they didn't have all the details.  Patreon only benefits through providing this platform by taking a small portion from the creators that choose to trust their platform & not to be taken advantage of or to be incorrectly penalized (remember my account did get incorrectly marked as adult-content back on 10/19/2019 & never did get corrected).  If people lose trust in Patron as a legitimate "creator" funding platform, that word is going to get around & any potential income that Patreon could be putting in their pocket will dry up.

Do I think this will be enough to push Patreon to the breaking point & force a shutdown?  No, not really...  It's clear the termination of my creator page was a hair-trigger decision where no additional research on offsite rewards was done prior to the decision being made (people can claim free games with those points, not that anybody has actually taken advantage of what's in my StreamElements shop yet) & much like big name gaming companies feel their decisions take priority over their customers when developing their games, I fully suspect that Patreon will continue terminating creator accounts, regardless of the reason for the decision may have originally been made & not looking back on their decisions, even in the case of litigation...

If the account does get reinstated, I will give an update at that point, but otherwise it should be expected that I will no longer be seeking to be doing any form of business through Patreon or anybody else who may be running through them...

UPDATE:

Video response to account termination:

 

Subscriber-only streaming revoked, negating streaming of certain games that would have been otherwise

In the midst of starting to stream again, I noticed that Twitch has revoked my ability to do subscriber-only streams.  While this problem doesn't mean much seeing as I haven't had a subscriber since September 7th of 2019, certain games (or modes) I am ONLY willing to stream if they are subscriber-only.  This includes PvP games where you can be stream-sniped & your stream can be used against you, as well as games that might give away personal information (such as Pokemon GO).  Because of this, games that fall under this category will not be getting streamed on Twitch until that option becomes available again.  While Discord streaming to a VIP channel might have been an option, considering this Discord function only seems to work correctly on Windows 10 (where I'm still running Windows 7 Ultimate), this also negates the possibility of streaming these games on Discord to a limited audience.  Additionally, I have had to stop streaming on Steam due to their lack of privacy options when it comes to game visibility on your profile (setting an option which hid game activity, which apparently also broke my ability to stream games on Steam).

Really the only option left at this point (at least with accounts I already have open) would be a private YouTube stream, however I'm still weary as to whether streaming to YouTube would be smart after they allowed the multiple attacks from Bandai/Namco back in 2016 (now expect this blog to also get attacked simply because I mentioned it, not that it really matters; the main purpose for the blog is a feed for the Twitch channel, so it don't really need to be public or listed in search engines as it links off of my channel).  Note that this particular reason is also why I STILL refuse to put my payment information on ANY Google-owned platform (at least until Google Fiber is available is my area, this might be the only thing that breaks this deadlock on refusal to put any money into Google's pockets), including Google Play, despite sticking primarily to Samsung Galaxy S-series smartphones & Android tablets.

Sometime after 9 PM on July 11th, I noticed that my internet had started to have issues, only giving me about half of the transfer rate I was supposed to be getting since my switch to CenturyLink (40 mbps download & 3 upload), which can be seen here:

After the call on the 11th, they said they were going to have somebody look at it, but I never got an update on this & attempted to contact them again for a followup on the 13th, to which I got 2 answers that didn't go anywhere (the first call not saying a thing after their picked up, the second call not saying anything until I started repeating "Hello?" to see if anybody was even there, they eventually asked for my name & account number, where after I gave them that information, they started claiming that they couldn't hear me speaking.

I tried again the following day (the 14th) in an attempt to get an update on what was going on, finally getting somebody who responded, it seems that a support ticket wasn't even opened on the first call I made on the 11th.  I did start messing with the cables attached to the back of my modem & did a few more power recycles to see if it was just a loose cable, I got it working again (at full speed), so I closed the work ticket & went to bed (spending more time that I should have trying to get this working & mitigating what online tasks I could get done while the connection was malfunctioning).  When I woke up however, I saw that the issue was back (this time on the other line to the modem), so I rescheduled the previous work order (luckily I still had the email with the confirm, reschedule & cancel links in it).

The technician came to work on the issue on the 15th, stating that the problem was simply a clasp that had disconnected itself from the connection, so all he had to do was reclasp it & my internet was working at full capacity again.

After the got it working again, I was discussing the transfer rates with him & prorated refunds for time that the internet was not working at full capacity.  He explained that I would get an automatic prorated refund based on when the support ticket was opened, but this would only be fore the time that the ticket was opened (this means I'd only be getting back to the 14th, the 11th to the 13th I'd get stiffed on).  I stated that I might have to call CenturyLink's billing to try & get back the rest of it (stating that I had speedtest & call logs regarding the matter I could probably use as evidence to get the rest of it).

Beyond that, he also was talking to me about the capabilities of what I should be able to get in transfer rates on my home (this coming after I was speaking to my neighbor about his outage with CenturyLink, a full outage for a couple days in his case, but he was getting a MUCH FASTER transfer rate).  The technician stated that I should be able to get a higher transfer rate & for testing sake, he increased my upload rate to test it's capabilities.  While he increased it to 20 mbps for this testing period (which he was intending on lowering back to what CenturyLink is claiming what should be available in my area, despite my neighbors being able to get 100 mbps upload & 40 upload), I was getting roughly 13 mbps when I ran a speedtest with the elevated speeds.

It appears for the time being, he's going to leave it at the higher transfer rate (at least until CenturyLink's system kicks it back to the mere 3 that was assigned to me when I switched back to them in 2018).  For this reason, I decided I wouldn't be seeking the addition credit to my account for the 3 days that isn't going to be prorated in the automatic refund as it's going to improve my ability to continue doing stuff online (at least as long as the increased upload rate remains for the 3 days that did not count due to their not creating a support ticket during the original conversation on the 11th).

Note that I have not been streaming to Twitch since the switch to CenturyLink & the initial tests that made it clear I could not continue streaming online multiplayer games with only 3 mbps upload rate, only leaving the possibility for single player games that didn't rely on internet bandwidth for decent functionality.  However provided this upload rate sticks for a while, I may be able to go back to streaming to Twitch until it's lowered again (at that point we're back to the waiting game of waiting for either CenturyLink to wire the neighborhood with fiber and ultimately until Google Fiber becomes available in my area, which is probably the only thing that is going to end my boycott that is keeping me from putting my payment information on any Google service after YouTube allowed Bandai/Namco to go after my YouTube channel simply because of a link that went to a review of one of their games on my personal site that they didn't agree with).

Long story short, those that are following the channel can expect some more streams to Twitch (at least until the upload rate is lowered again), so it's a pleasant change after 4 days of hell of not being able to do half of what I've been attempting to get done, we'll just have to see how long it lasts before I have to stop streaming again...