Wesnoth on Liberapay

General feedback and discussion of the game.

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Pentarctagon
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Re: Wesnoth on Liberapay

Post by Pentarctagon »

Personally, I'm not especially enthusiastic about crypto-currency, but as long as there's a way to automatically convert donations into USD then I don't have any objections at least.

Ultimately, however, it's up to the Board whether they want to set up crypto-currency donations or not.
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vultraz
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Re: Wesnoth on Liberapay

Post by vultraz »

As Pent says, we'd want to have any cryoto donations immediately converted into USD. We're not interested in running a crypto wallet. I'm considering a Coinbase account for us (We were already planning on a Patreon too, so among those three and Liberapay that should basically cover everything); if we set that up we'll let people know.
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gntrakas
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Re: Wesnoth on Liberapay

Post by gntrakas »

I suggest you also add a donation as an in-app purchase on steam. This way the game also stays in users' libraries even if they uninstall the game.
shevegen
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Re: Wesnoth on Liberapay

Post by shevegen »

I think doofus-01 missed part of the point - it is not about an "obligation" to be transparent. Neither
that transparency only has to exist because of bad actors.

I think transparency in and itself is a great reason to have, even if everyone is a good actor.

Others show how this can be done, e. g. the KDE foundation; you can see where there expenditures
go.

Nobody said that everyone has to track every $2 donation to the cent. I don't see why that would
have to do with the general question of people who donate as to what is happening with the money
e. g. in yearly quartals or seminal summaries.
Adamira
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Re: Wesnoth on Liberapay

Post by Adamira »

Hi ! Nine months ago, I sparked here a discussion with my comment about transparency.
Adamira wrote: May 27th, 2019, 10:57 pm It would be nice to make a transparent account page, where people could see how exactly are the money spent.
After almost a year on Liberapay Wesnoth receives only 20$ a week, despite its great popularity. Something doesn't work here. I'd like to provide a feedback from the average user's perspective:

I like the game and want to support it. At the bottom of the page, there's an obscure yellow button I've never seen before, which leads to a poorly designed website I've never heard of before, asking me for a recurrent donation ! It looks completely different from the Wesnoth website, there's no explenation but a confusing FAQ. It looks like a total scam, not related to the game at all - unless I make a research what Liberapay is, but still. Id be crazy to give them a permanent access to my credit card. And even if I want to, it asks me to make an account, which is a final turn-off. I'm not conviced, no way !

Proposed solution - a nice button leading to a user-friendly "Donate" wiki page, which simply and honestly explains how the project works and what happens with the money. Short version of the "About" page, some future plans for the game, links to the financial reports. Allow single donations and use PayPal gateway - it's trustworthy and people know it.

I'm an occasional player and I like to see the game going forward. However, you should carefully plan what to do with the money before you raise it, to avoid any conflicts ! I think that money can easily ruin any volunteer-based project.
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Re: Wesnoth on Liberapay

Post by Tad_Carlucci »

Most FAQ are actually QWWUAF (Questions We Wish You Asked Frequently) and they fact they're felt to be needed is either due to inertia (But MOM, **EVERYONE** is doing it!) or poor design (Want to know what this is all about? Don't look at the web page, you need to read the FAQ).
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Anton_Libram
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Re: Wesnoth on Liberapay

Post by Anton_Libram »

Hello,

I have been playing the game since a friend of mine gave the game on a CD-Rom nearly twelve years ago when I was in elementary school. I was a little kid back then, and i never stopped playing. My dad got hooked as well, despite not being into video games at all, and to this day The Battle for Wesnoth is the only game he plays. We had, and still have, a lot of fun playing it as a familly (my little brother joined us eventually!), and we are curently writting our own campaign as a familly project.
For everything Wesnoth brought us, it came as a surprise when we realised the project was so under funded. As such we were willing to contribute a monthly amout of money to the project; but it turns out it's currently far from easy to contribute in Euros (we are French) through the website you provided (or maybe we're just dumb, we aren't really the techy kind).
How should we proceed in order to make a donation in euros? Is it mandatory to convert everything to dollars?

A huge thank-you from everyone at home for this amazing, trully timeless game.
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Pentarctagon
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Re: Wesnoth on Liberapay

Post by Pentarctagon »

Anton_Libram wrote: February 11th, 2020, 10:44 pm Hello,

I have been playing the game since a friend of mine gave the game on a CD-Rom nearly twelve years ago when I was in elementary school. I was a little kid back then, and i never stopped playing. My dad got hooked as well, despite not being into video games at all, and to this day The Battle for Wesnoth is the only game he plays. We had, and still have, a lot of fun playing it as a familly (my little brother joined us eventually!), and we are curently writting our own campaign as a familly project.
For everything Wesnoth brought us, it came as a surprise when we realised the project was so under funded. As such we were willing to contribute a monthly amout of money to the project; but it turns out it's currently far from easy to contribute in Euros (we are French) through the website you provided (or maybe we're just dumb, we aren't really the techy kind).
How should we proceed in order to make a donation in euros? Is it mandatory to convert everything to dollars?

A huge thank-you from everyone at home for this amazing, trully timeless game.
I've enabled accepting Euros, the downside however is that there's a fixed fee for converting it to dollars (since the Liberapay account is linked to Wesnoth, Inc's Paypal account).
Adamira wrote: February 9th, 2020, 6:47 am Hi ! Nine months ago, I sparked here a discussion with my comment about transparency.
Adamira wrote: May 27th, 2019, 10:57 pm It would be nice to make a transparent account page, where people could see how exactly are the money spent.
After almost a year on Liberapay Wesnoth receives only 20$ a week, despite its great popularity. Something doesn't work here. I'd like to provide a feedback from the average user's perspective:

I like the game and want to support it. At the bottom of the page, there's an obscure yellow button I've never seen before, which leads to a poorly designed website I've never heard of before, asking me for a recurrent donation ! It looks completely different from the Wesnoth website, there's no explenation but a confusing FAQ. It looks like a total scam, not related to the game at all - unless I make a research what Liberapay is, but still. Id be crazy to give them a permanent access to my credit card. And even if I want to, it asks me to make an account, which is a final turn-off. I'm not conviced, no way !

Proposed solution - a nice button leading to a user-friendly "Donate" wiki page, which simply and honestly explains how the project works and what happens with the money. Short version of the "About" page, some future plans for the game, links to the financial reports. Allow single donations and use PayPal gateway - it's trustworthy and people know it.

I'm an occasional player and I like to see the game going forward. However, you should carefully plan what to do with the money before you raise it, to avoid any conflicts ! I think that money can easily ruin any volunteer-based project.
I'm not really familiar with what Paypal offers in terms of allowing people to send money to an account and whether they'd need to create a Paypal account to do that or not. Internally though, the debate essentially came down to Liberapay and-or Patreon, with Liberapay ultimately being the one implemented since there were some concerns with what kinds of expectations supporters on Patreon would have (rewards, different tiers, etc) whereas Liberapay is strictly about donations. Liberapay also doesn't take a percentage of the money donated, whereas Patreon does. Additionally, we were approached about the Android port of Wesnoth being put on the fdroid store, which only supports Liberapay for donations. I will admit that Liberapay is not as well known, though.

As far as the money itself, Wesnoth, Inc has been receiving revenue from iOS app sales for a fairly long time before the Liberapay was put up, so the fact that the project has a way to raise money isn't at all new to the Liberapay existing.

Beyond that, short of publishing the dollar amounts, the first post of this thread is really all there is in terms of where money comes from and how it gets used.
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Anton_Libram
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Re: Wesnoth on Liberapay

Post by Anton_Libram »

Amazing! Thank you so much Pentarctagon.
As far as we are concerned, I can not agree more with Adamira's point. A Paypal page would be way more user friendly - although I do believe they take a fee if you're not an individual, with the upside that an account is not required.
Would it be technically feasible to make a direct donation page on the wesnoth website? Just as a dumb question, I don't have the slightest clue of the technical side involved.
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Re: Wesnoth on Liberapay

Post by Tad_Carlucci »

On another project where I take Paypal, they take the fee from individuals donating (unless those funds comes from a Paypal balance, which means someone else paid the fee before my donor received them).
I forked real life and now I'm getting merge conflicts.
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Re: Wesnoth on Liberapay

Post by Pentarctagon »

It could be something to look into in the future, though I don't know when that would end up being at this point.
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MarieMorrison
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Re: Wesnoth on Liberapay

Post by MarieMorrison »

I think Board members are the only ones who have access to this information, so most contributors will not know how the money is used.
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Re: Wesnoth on Liberapay

Post by ArneBab »

I just sent you 26 Euro for the next two years. Thank you for making it possible to support Wesnoth with money!

(also my son started playing Wesnoth today and I prefer paying for free software)
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Re: Wesnoth on Liberapay

Post by mzs_47 »

Can you please put this info/link on the main page of the website? I mean unless someone searches/stumbles upon this post, it is hard to discover.
Also, I just donated for the year and will continue sending and increase as I grow financially in life, and allowing onetime donation will also help users.

Wesnoth has entertained and continues to entertain me, my siblings and cousins in single player and multiplayer. Thank you!
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Re: Wesnoth on Liberapay

Post by Pentarctagon »

mzs_47 wrote: July 31st, 2020, 7:19 am Can you please put this info/link on the main page of the website? I mean unless someone searches/stumbles upon this post, it is hard to discover.
Also, I just donated for the year and will continue sending and increase as I grow financially in life, and allowing onetime donation will also help users.

Wesnoth has entertained and continues to entertain me, my siblings and cousins in single player and multiplayer. Thank you!
There's a Donate section at the bottom of the main page, actually.
99 little bugs in the code, 99 little bugs
take one down, patch it around
-2,147,483,648 little bugs in the code
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