Patreon

About

Patreon is an online crowdfunding platform that allows creatives to receive regular payments from users to fund their work.

History

Patreon^[1] was launched in May 2013, by musician Jack Conte as a means to receive regular payments from fans of his YouTube videos. By February 2014, nearly half of Patreon artists were YouTube video creators. In June 2014, Patreon raised $15 million in Series A funding from investors Alexis Ohanian, Sam Altman, David Marcus, Joshua Reeves and other tech entrepreneurs.^[6]

GamerGate Controversy

As interest grew in the GamerGate controversy, it was discovered that several games journalists were actively contributing money to indie game developer Zoe Quinn’s Patreon account, including Polygon editor Ben Kuchera. On August 26th, Kotaku^[3] editor Stephen Totilo posted a statement regarding the gaming news site’s code of ethics, announcing that Kotaku^[3] journalists would not be allowed to contribute to the Patreon accounts of game developers. The same day, Polygon^[4] followed up with a similar statement announcing that all writers must disclose any contributions they have made to developer’s Patreon accounts. Readers later released a statement condemning Polygon’s new ethics policy for being unsatisfactory.^[9] On September 5th, Totilo revised his statement regarding Patreon support, noting that Kotaku could support Patreon pages in order to gain access to developer’s work.^[7]

Sarkeesian Effect

On August 23rd, vloggers Davis Aurini and Jordan Owen launched a Patreon^[5] page for a documentary called “The Sarkeesian Effect,” which aimed to investigate GamerGate and “give a voice to those who have been victimized by the social justice moral authority” (shown below).

On September 30th, Twitter user Dave Doyle tweeted at Conte asking him to remove The Sarkeesian Effect page for being “sexist.” Jack Conte responded that an open discussion about the page would be held on Patreon. It was subsequently determined that the page did not violate Patreon’s terms of service.