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So, can we talk about the payout system?

A topic by Parenthesis Press created Sep 05, 2019 Views: 8,563 Replies: 19

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Parenthesis Press5 years ago(+4)

Because it seriously needs to be revamped. It's WAY too slow: no other site that I'm using to sell my games requires me to wait 7 days after a payment has been made to even request to receive the money, and they CERTAINLY don't take weeks to actually act on that request. If I can't reliably receive the income that my games are generating in a reasonably prompt manner, why should I point people to itch.io to buy my stuff when I could direct them to another platform that will literally have my money all the way in my bank account within minutes of the transaction?

leafoPinned ReplyAdmin5 years ago (2 edits) (+2)

itch.io has two separate ways to get paid as described on our documentation about getting paid: Direct to you and Collected by itch.io, paid later

As the name might suggest, with Direct to you you collect money directly at time of transaction. We have this available for all accounts, and you can use Stripe Connect and PayPal. When you're configuring your account you can select direct payments on the Payment processors page. Using these systems will make you the merchant of record and put additionally liability on you and your seller account, but also gives you more control over the transactions and funds sent into your account.

Collected by itch.io, paid later is also known as the payouts system. We use our own business accounts to act as merchant of record to sell your game or product, pool the earnings, then pay out to you at a later time. This type of system is a target for fraud so we have to take additional precautions. We will likely never remove the 7 day buffer from purchase to claim (and the additional payout review time), since it enables us to manage risk accordingly. We have been hit with a lot of fraud in the past. For the safety of itch.io we ask that you have some patience when receiving payouts from us. Thanks for understanding.

No Time To PlayModerator moved this topic to Questions & Support 5 years ago

No Time To PlayModerator5 years ago(+2)

You must not be using popular services like Gumroad, that also withholds your money for a week. Or Leanpub, that keeps it for 40 days. Ironically, someone on Game Jolt was recently using us as an example of marketplace that pays creators instantly (turns out they were using the Direct To You payment method). Everyone keeps your money for a while, it's an absolute necessity in order to handle refunds and fraud.

Delays in actually sending the money once a payout becomes available and is requested, those are another story.

Parenthesis Press5 years ago(+1)

True, I'm not using those services. I'd heard bad things about Gumroad for other reasons, and Leanpub has never crossed my radar until now. DriveThruRPG is my other major storefront, which is the one I was referring to in the original post; if someone tweets me that they bought my game there, it's already in my available balance by the time I've pointed my browser there, and I can hit a button to get my money sent to PayPal instantaneously.

That makes me wonder why other platforms aren't apparently able (or willing?) to provide that level of responsiveness.

No Time To PlayModerator5 years ago

See above: if DriveThruRPG sends your money instantly, that means they have no good way to handle refunds and fraud. Either they rely on their own money to absorb those, or else they don't do it at all. Which means the first time something serious happens, they'll be in legal hot water, and quite possibly drag some of the creators along with them.

Parenthesis Press5 years ago

Given that they've been running for 18 years now without having had such an issue come up, to my knowledge, they must have something figured out. None of the designers I know or have spoken to that use the site have ever heard of a significant case of fraud there. There's evidence that their policy used to be that they held royalties for 60 days before allowing withdrawal, but that's clearly no longer the case. As for refunds, they offer it as store credit only.

Jeroen P. Broks5 years ago

Can you source that claim? The risk DriveTruRPG takes by this would be so unacceptably high, and I can't believe only honest people come to that site. I want to be able to verify this claim before I believe it. Even when refunds are offered in store credit only it would be very very costly if the real money was already sent away, since these 'credits' can then replace real money in a different purchase, so that doesn't make much of a change in risks compared to real-money refunds, so bringing that up as the reason why they would instantly pay out doesn't make any sense to me at all.

Parenthesis Press5 years ago

So you want me to prove a negative?

Jeroen P. Broks5 years ago

Since payment stuff is always very sensitive to fraud, the exact policy in how money is given out must be written out somewhere by the site's administration. And means both the positive and negative. Legal issues you get when you don't, can work out quite terrible, you know. Whatever you call it, yeah, I wanna have some official sources that allow me to verify the claim that DriveTrueRPG does really pay out immediately, and does not hold your money for 60 days (or any time period for that matter). You are the one making that completely incredible claim, so you can't blame me for wanting to see some official sources that back that claim up.

Parenthesis Press5 years ago

Ah, so you think I'm lying. Cool. Don't know what benefit I would gain from making this up, but whatever.

Here is a partial sales report of my DTRPG account from August 1 to August 10, 2019. I earned $3.25 from one sale, and $6.50 from another sale. I had previously withdrawn my royalty balance, so those two sales, total $9.75, are the sum available to me.

https://imgur.com/u4FzwTW

I initiated a payment for that royalty payment on August 11, 2019. The total included in the payout, shown here, is $9.75. That means money that had been paid to me by a customer less than 24 hours previously was included, not withheld.

https://imgur.com/4peZbWm

Here's the receipt of the PayPal payment. The timestamp of the request, above, was 6:58pm, and I had the money in my PayPal, minus a $1 processing fee, the same day.

https://imgur.com/f1WQznm

Satisfied?

Jeroen P. Broks5 years ago

Nope!

And what benefit do you have by lying? Well, the benefit must be great as I've heard lies about payment systems on other sites dozens of time, during my time as a moderator for Game Jolt, where the same discussion also comes back a lot. Oh, and proof was never provided there either, and by now I even know some claims about itch.io were made that have now been denied by moderators here, so yeah, I wonder too what the point in lying is, but hey, I am not the one making these claims,so, how could I know 😜 Impatience comes to mind first. (that or misunderstanding of the systems other sites have).

Second, what you show is NOT what I asked for. I asked official documentation about the payment policies. None were provided. The screenshots you show wouldn't convince me that easily. First of all, the data on the screenshots isn't full, so no irrefutable relations are shown. Second, even if they were about the same payment, nothing's been proven. Multiple purchases could have taken place, of which the true purchase is outside of the screenshot, and that by coincidence somebody bought the same game just on the same day the previous purchase was paid out, which is just one of the dozens of theories that can... Oh, and in times of photoshopping I'm surprised you believe screenshots can convince anybody that easily. (Most internet shopping sites do not provide the name of the buyer, since privacy laws don't allow them to).

And even if the claims are true, then DriveThruRPG must have some way in which they can do that in a risk-free way. Like I said before I don't believe only honest people make use of their service (as they'd be the first company in the history of mankind to which that happens), however if people get swindled through DriveThruRPG, they will get the blame and not the swindlers (that's how the human mind works) and I don't think DriveThruRPG can let that happen. They'd be out of business already if they were that naive. If they really pay out immediately, they must have some kind of safeguard. Can you show me the documentation on their site that proves this. And even if it's noted there some extra clauses must exist so they can catch things up. I was asking for this documentation on their part. Not for some screenshots which provide too little information.

If DriveThruRPG would just give out payments immediately without any kind of good reasoning behind it they'd be either a) stupid or b) beyond naive or c) not legal themselves. Either way I wouldn't do business with them, in that case (nor would ANYONE in their right mind), so if they do, I wanna see how they can do that, and laws in most countries obligate proper documentation on such things... Show me that... Not some non-informative screenshots, as they don't help me at all...

Parenthesis Press5 years ago

After some emails back and forth discussing the question with my publisher representative at DTRPG, the CEO, Steve Wieck, sent me this response:

"The short answer to your concern is that, yes, it’s a little bit crazy how we do things here. Most other marketplaces at all similar to us hold payments from sales far longer.

We are accepting a level of financial risk with our publisher payment process.

That said, we do take quite a number of precautions, but we don’t openly discuss those as general knowledge of them would allow bad actors to determine the best ways to game them."

Which is what I expected from the start: it's standard business practice not to publicly divulge exploitable details of financial practices. So, in short, you're probably not going to get a public run-down of what you asked for.

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No Time To PlayModerator5 years ago

Some people smoke for a lifetime and never get lung cancer. That doesn't mean they figured something out. They just got lucky. As for refunds, limiting them to store credit explains why they don't need to hold onto cash. This must have become legal where they operate in the mean time; that they changed policy at one point suggests it wasn't always the case.

I can't tell you under what assumptions and limitations Itch.io operates under, money-wise. But you see now that marketplaces sending out money to creators instantly is a lot less common than you think. Please understand: this is a business, with an accounting department, that has to mind both local and international laws concerning (e-)commerce. And there's a lot of them nowadays, all very serious.

Jeroen P. Broks5 years ago

"Ironically, someone on Game Jolt was recently using us as an example of marketplace that pays creators instantly"

I wonder, since as a former Game Jolt moderator I've received many complaints (even a short time before my days as a GJ moderator came to an end), about people who got into distrust since they had to wait for their money for some time. Although I was not in charge of GJ's marketplace I too know that GJ keeps your money for at least a week if not longer, and indeed fraud prevention and/or refunds are also the reason there (I never heard of the Direct To You payment method, actually). By the way I am also a novel writer, and (Dutch) novels I sell also do not cause me to get my money instantly (depending on when a novel has been sold I may even have to wait for a month).

"if DriveThruRPG sends your money instantly, that means they have no good way to handle refunds and fraud."

Which I would deem very very stupid, and a very good reason to never release anything there (at least not paid stuff), as I would be willing to wait for my cash to make sure no legal issues can arise. It's not only the seller who can try to swindle a site and its users, you know. Buyers can too, and cause a lot of trouble in the process.

Now on Game Jolt too claims came in that "other sites" (and yes, some of them even mentioned itch.io, how convenient) pay you instantly came in, and I was always a bit skeptical about it, and I guess now that I see this topic, I got my evidence, the claims were a lie (at least as far as itch was concerned) 🤣

No Time To PlayModerator5 years ago

Well, we do have the Direct To You payment method, but it comes with several caveats: you must be able to receive payments through PayPal and/or Stripe, handle any complaints yourself, and also pay all relevant taxes. Which nowadays can be especially tricky, with all the national and international regulations involved. Not to mention payment processors have itchy trigger fingers as it is. So if anything it's more of a legacy method, left in place for people who know what they're doing, and not recommended otherwise.

Jeroen P. Broks5 years ago

Hmmm, sounds risky. You sure the users of "direct to you" are sued and not itch.io if anything goes wrong?
I would not be fond myself to include such a feature if I were ever to host a site like this (no plans in the nearby future though).
Well I trust you guys also know what you are doing ;)

No Time To PlayModerator5 years ago

You'll have to ask our admins. :) We strongly recommend against using this option nowadays, for what it's worth.

sadambober5 years ago(+1)

Speaking of payouts, can someone please speed up ticket #32923? I've been trying to get my money since March and only ever got one response in July

leafoAdmin5 years ago (1 edit) (+1)

Hello, sorry about the delay. I'm looking up your ticket now and we'll get back to your shortly. Thanks

Also, please don't post your issue in unrelated topics! Although we want to help everyone, we have to keep the community organized. Thanks

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