I was introduced to Tabletop Roleplaying Games 10 years ago, and fell in love with them immediately. I still love and play TTRPGs today, and one of the manifestations of that love is browsing itch.io, Kickstarter, and DriveThruRPG for new games, settings, and adventures to buy. One of the things I enjoy about this hobby is being able to directly support the creators who are making games that I like to play, and doing a small bit to empower them to keep creating.
Unfortunately, my money doesn’t go as far in supporting these creators as I wish it could. A large share of any money going to a tabletop RPG creator is going to the platform that they sell on, and a small but not insignificant percentage is going to PayPal, Stripe, or some other payment processor. I understand, and don’t particularly mind, the need to support DriveThru or itch.io (or Kickstarter, Patreon, and anywhere else I am purchasing from creators). These businesses are relatively small, and mostly do good work in supporting creators. I resent, however, how much money goes towards the corporations who have monopolized the payments industry.
DriveThruRPG does not release information on what percentage of a purchase goes to PayPal, instead wrapping it with their own fees. Creators on DriveThruRPG can expect to take home 65% to 70% of what a customer pays. PayPal does list it’s fees publically, and they are quite complicated, but it’s safe to assume DriveThruRPG is paying close to the industry standard 2.9% and $0.30 per transaction it makes with PayPal.
This seems like a small amount at first glance, but those fixed fees can add up. With transactions less than $5, which happen to be some of the most popular price points for TTRPGs and their supplements, the cut for the payment processor is well over 3%. On a $5 RPG, that would be $0.445 going to PayPal for facilitating the transaction, or 8.9% of the transaction.
Itch.io, long known as a popular marketplace for indie video games, has been gaining popularity in the TTRPG space in recent years, in no small part due to their friendliness to creators. The website introduced the concept of Open Revenue Sharing, allowing creators to give them as low as 0% of the list price of their RPGs when sold on Itch. This is an incredibly generous deal for creators, and Itch deserves the praise they have received for it.
That 0% headline has a caveat though: Itch.io isn’t any more free from payment processors. Itch is very transparent about their payment gateways, and list that each transaction on their website loses $0.30 + 2.9% to either Stripe or PayPal. On a site built around Pay-What-You-Want, where throwing $1 or $2 towards a game to show support for a creator releasing something for free, losing a significant portion of that payment to a massive payments company can sometimes feel like a slap in the face.
While Itch.io is gaining in popularity recently, historically the most popular way to avoid DriveThruRPG’s (and the *shudder* DMs Guild’s) high fees has been for creators to host their own websites, either independently or with a publisher. Some examples of this include: A Thousand Thousand Islands, Exalted Funeral, and L.F. OSR. Most of these independent websites use either Shopify or a combination of WordPress and WooCommerce. While they are able to avoid marketplace fees, they cannot avoid the standard 2.9% + $0.30 fee even here. The credit card companies must get their due.
No talk of supporting creators would be complete without mentioning Patreon, and the TTRPG community is no stranger to this platform. The $1 tier is a popular one for creators on Patreon, and for good reason. Sending $1 every month to a creator you appreciate is an easy way to give back, and $3, $5, and even $10 tiers are common for those who can afford it.
At this point, you can probably see where this is going. After Patreon’s 5-12% platform fees, and the above listed payment processing fees, that $1 gift to a creator is reduced to $0.80, in the best case. It’s still something, and on a $10 transaction the creator is going to be getting a larger share ($8.91). But when I am giving $1 to a creator, I’d like my money to go as far as possible. Why not $0.99?
Currently, the payment processor fees described here are a necessary evil. There is no way to accept a payment online without incurring something close to the fees listed here. This lack of options extends beyond TTRPGs, to all forms of online commerce in 2023, from video games, to small businesses, food delivery, large scale retail, media, and anywhere we use our credit cards online. I’d like to see a world where there is another option, for creators and those who support them.
It was for this reason, among others, that I co-founded Madora, where we charge only 1% on payments, no matter how small. I’d like to see a world where creators have the option to receive more for their work, and those who support them have the option to give it. That world is one with less middlemen, and less payment processor monopolies, and that is what we are working towards here at Madora.
-Brandon, Co-Founder
Great article!