SWGEmu Finance Update June 2023

[vasilij]

I know it most likely aint many of us - but is it possible with a payment option that dosnt involve Paypal?
The only donation options requires it to go through paypal, with or without an account.

[lordkator]

I know it most likely aint many of us - but is it possible with a payment option that dosnt involve Paypal?
The only donation options requires it to go through paypal, with or without an account.

We use Paypal as our primary system of record, we've thought about other things like Patreon etc but then it gets messy reconciling across multiple services etc.

Is there a specific reason you won't use Paypal even without an account?

[vasilij]

We use Paypal as our primary system of record, we've thought about other things like Patreon etc but then it gets messy reconciling across multiple services etc.

Is there a specific reason you won't use Paypal even without an account?

I understand the difficulties and administration it requires to run multiple services, so the choice of going with a single solution does make sense.
Obviously i can only speak on my own behalf, but I have several times clicked the donate button just to check if there were other/new options to help everything on tracks.
If you keep the survey pop up running, try adding a question if people would donate if there were another payment option - just to get a rough idea if it would be worthwhile.

As with all choices there is ofc. a reason behind - but that is personal and nothing that concerns the public

[Ebak Zarr]

We use Paypal as our primary system of record, we've thought about other things like Patreon etc but then it gets messy reconciling across multiple services etc.

Is there a specific reason you won't use Paypal even without an account?

I despise PayPal because I’ve had my card and bank information stolen through them. Large amounts of money were transferred from my accounts during my house purchasing process. Big pain in the ***. Would never have used them again, but the donation here was PayPal only. I felt dirty afterwards. Now I’m watching my account like a hawk for who knows how long.

[Bazari]

Could development of new updated be voted on by donations. Let the the amount donated toward an improvement choose which update gets done? It would give people a chance to feel more involved in the direction of the game.

[Lolindir]

Could development of new updated be voted on by donations. Let the the amount donated toward an improvement choose which update gets done? It would give people a chance to feel more involved in the direction of the game.

That is something we could take into consideration.

[Bostwain]

Could development of new updated be voted on by donations. Let the the amount donated toward an improvement choose which update gets done? It would give people a chance to feel more involved in the direction of the game.

This seems exploitable.

What if someone donates to win the poll, then contests the charges and takes back the donation after the changes are made?

[Lolindir]

Other services also take relative large fees of every $ donated. Paypal is our bank and they have reasonable fees, just like an actual bank, but on the contrary of a bank, especially when you get money from multinational sources, Paypal is by far easier for both us and the donators. Paypal can also, as LK has said, be used without and account.

I personally like Paypal. I don't get my credit card info all over, all subscribsons are gathered in one place, so that it makes it easier for me to actually cancel them. All I need to do is log into Paypal and to the sub page and cancel the ones I don't wish to continue. I don't need to go to each page and do it there. Some have made it really difficult to cancel the sub also. Then Paypal makes it easy for me. Paypal also makes it easy to show me how much I have used total on each sub.

I despise PayPal because I’ve had my card and bank information stolen through them. Large amounts of money were transferred from my accounts during my house purchasing process. Big pain in the ***. Would never have used them again, but the donation here was PayPal only. I felt dirty afterwards. Now I’m watching my account like a hawk for who knows how long.

Sorry to hear that. The solution would be to donate outside of an account or to have the donation not been recurring and then have to do it manually each time you wish to donate.

[vasilij]

Im sure theres plenty of personal stories, good and bad, but this wasn't intended to be a platform for that, or a pro/against Paypal.
Just poking possibilities for some more donations and looking into ways that could gauge if it was worthwhile with some alternative payment service/option.

[Ebak Zarr]

Someone on either this thread or a related thread mentioned purchasing a server rather than renting. I don’t know the whole cost related to running/maintaining a server that we purchase, but is that a possibility? Have the numbers been run? I would be more interested in supporting a higher upfront cost if the long term costs are drastically reduced.

[Lolindir]

Problem is that we have hardwear that fail all the time. a disk that crash or ram that fail. Upgrades needed to be done. When rented, we don't notice that much. If we own, we have to deal with that and one of us has to have the server physically in reach at any time. It will have to be more than one. We are spread all over the world. The project can't expect one person to be here 24/7, 365 days out of the year. It's just not possible. No one would even want that. Our lives is more than SWGEmu.

[nazoreen]

About this table, could you tell us specificaly why you use services for ?
For example, Google LLC or Wasabi, you are using these services for what exactly ?
1password, you could use Keepass or Bitwarden instead.
If you could find inexpensive alternative for every line, we could reduce costs. Yesterday, I told about europeans servers, but you could see in Quebec Canada (PlanetHoster or OVH for example). Google Cloud is more expensive than Google or Microsoft cloud, may be it could be interesting to calculate costs.
I think we will find less expensive solutions if web work all together.

[nazoreen]

What do you think about a subscription of 6$ per year for every users ?

[Bostwain]

What do you think about a subscription of 6$ per year for every users ?

Walt and Mickey would not like that

[Jay Forerunner]

Walt and Mickey would not like that

Would be nice to Jedi Mind Trick the rat, but I doubt that's a task anyone is equipped to actually accomplish.