LP Update/Comment Thread

[IskatuMesk]

Hey guys. I'm working on getting donations set up.

Currently, it seems that Paypal reveals the real names of people who send me payment, and there are people who aren't comfortable with that and I don't blame them one bit. I also reveals my name which isn't really a big deal because technically I don't "exist", but it's something I'd still rather avoid if possible.

I'm looking into Patreon as an alternative because I believe it acts as a middleman and shields personal info from payees and payers. However, Patreon requires some foreign tax ID I'd never heard and and my grandmother knows nothing about. I'm still looking into this but, for the time being, it looks like the paypal donate option may be the only option.

/edit

I've spent the last few days nearly non-stop researching these subjects and trying to understand them, and I'm really getting nowhere. There is no compendium of knowledge about anything related to this despite how huge of a business it is for many people.

Tax ID's are an American thing in this context. The IRS uses it to keep track of you and all that shit. As far as Patreon is concerned, it seems that, in concept, the idea is to simply prove you are not a US citizen so you don't get hit by the enormous 30% taxation. However, donations or whatnot coming from Patreon still count as income, and is taxable (from what I've read so far). I have no interest in filing all kinds of tax shit and getting involved in such a convoluted process just for a few donations. However, it appears that the Canadian SIN can be used in place of a foreign ID and may automate or completely remove taxation problems. Unfortunately, Patreon's return e-mail didn't answer any of my really important questions, they just said "put in NA for the foreign ID until we update the site". That doesn't tell me if I am going to get hit with huge taxes, if I have to worry about taxes to begin with, or if I can use my SIN.

Paypal is a different boat.

The Donation button with Paypal has a 10k cap. If you hit this cap your account gets locked out and all funds are held until you can provide you are a legitimate non-profit organization by having some kind of id. Now, if I had 10k worth of donations I would be an insanely lucky and rich person, but it doesn't seem that big of a number if I produce videos for another 6-7 years and get semi-regular donations of 20-50 dollars every so often. Some years down the line I may inadvertedly cross that line and get burned.

The Paypal customer support suggested taking the Buy Now button and rebranding it as a Donate button. At first thought this seems like some kind of cheesy and potentially law-breaking workaround, but on second thought it may have to do with the legality of underlying mechanisms within Paypal involving those buttons. It probably has to do with some kind of fees or documentation associated with those buttons. This makes me a bit more wary of those buttons, because Buy Now may also result in a possible tax-related clusterfuck, if legal implications of wording are involved.

I have a lot of questions about these that only deepen the more I look into google. The FAQ's of neither site address even a shred of my concerns regarding the matter. As it is, I can probably put up a donate button and just hope for the best. At the worst my account gets locked out and I lose everything, but given people have been doing that for years and there are only a few cases of this being posted, I cannot help but think maybe Paypal had other reasons to lock those accounts.

/edit 2

After extensive reading on various accounts of dealing with Paypal and donations, I think it's safest to not do it.

Paypal treats Donations from a legal standpoint that effectively says "you need to be a non-profit organization".

Now, there are some interesting points to this but I am treating them as inconsequential for now.

1 - The Paypal representative said that I could use a Buy Now button and rebrand the image to a Donation image (using... drumroll, photobucket lol). Two things here. I asked him if I could continue to perform my services on a Personal Account and this was never answered. Research indicates if I went with this solution I'd need a business account and therefore be representing a corporation of some kind. Since nothing like that would actually exist, if any kind of documentation was required or any extra fees (likely) came as a result, I would be getting shit on for nothing. Also, it's a pain in the ass to set up yet another account for something.

The second thing is, I read an account where someone said a representative told them Paypal did not officially care if they used the donate button for a similar cause (a blog) but they could consider rebranding the image for it, though context on why was not given. This is uncannily similar to the advice given to me by this rep and alludes to some kind of inner policy regarding not simply how the buttons are used (e.g. a bunch of Russians donate to me and it gets flagged because "suspicious activity") but also how they are presented (obviously donations cannot allude to being given for a raffle or prize or anything). The specifics and similarities of these two statements definitely reflect policies that are not, in any shape or form, reflected in any part of Paypal's site.

Hypothetically I could post the button here, rebrand it, add a huge disclaimer, and if Paypal inevitably decides to lock my account and demand documentation, I can run the gauntlet these other individuals did, talking over the phone for hours to explain the situation and unlock the funds. But to be honest that is a really stupid way to run any kind of operation and I have enough stress without worrying if someone's donation is going to get held up or even lost because the middle man isn't doing his job right.

2.) The "Buy Now" button requiring a business account alludes to potential conflicts of interest should Patreon deliver regular payments to my account, as it constitutes as a business legally. Ergo, I am making income based on it. Literally no information whatsoever exists for the relationship between Patreon and Paypal, so either it's not an issue, or I might still need a business account to be secure. Why can't Patreon just pay to my credit card or bank?

3.) Theories exist that Paypal's limiting happens as the result of bots combing activity for red flags and not from individual complaints or monitoring. This is not surprising given the scale of Paypal's operation and the consistency of repeat limits being afflicted on what Paypal describes to be legitimate activity.

4.) Paypal's quoted statements seem to imply that being a registered non-profit organization is not necessarily a requirement to legally receive donations on Paypal, but a requirement to use the button and service in itself. This almost certainly has to do with American bullshit.


Above all, this has been a lesson in how absolutely mindblowingly retarded legalese, tax documents, and all things regarding donations and being a merchant really are. I pity anyone who actually tries to make a business out of this shit. It's a huge waste of time because no one wants to write information in plain English, much less make complete documentation. It is ridiculous how so many large organizations cannot even so much as present information much less organize existing information in a manner 99% of people can comprehend without paying hundreds for an accountant. It is like the entire system is intentionally designed to be as isolated and convoluted as possible to keep a few penpushers their jobs. Tax documents in their various forms are literally referred to as numbers and one or two letters. Shit. I need a glossary just to even have any shred of any idea of what half of these google results are even referring to. As it turns out, half of them have nothing to do with any of the related subjects.

I really want to just drop this entire thing and make some kind of personal deals with people who wanted to donate, but I might be getting close to having Patreon sorted out.

That brings us to the next clusterfuck.

Patreon's foreign tax ID requirement is not a requirement and this has been an issue for months as far as google tells. There is no concrete, solid evidence I can use my Canadian SIN in its place or what the potential costs or implications are for doing so or not doing so. The information does not exist as far as I can tell from days of googling. No seriously, this is bamboozling how fucked up this entire circus is. Some people just went ahead and did it to proclaim "hey it accepted it!" but it accepted NA for me, so...

Jesus. I've wasted way too much time on this bullshit. I'm going back to work for now. I'll wait to see what Patreon says about the tax for not having a ID, or if they even give me a straight answer. If you don't mind me knowing where you live, what your name is, and what you ate five and a half years ago, I think we can probably do something with Paypal, but I'd prefer Patreon and potentially setting up an alternate account on another site, like Payoneer. Patreon only supports Paypal and Payoneer. If anyone knows anything about that service or can vouch for them, do let me know.

/edit 4

I am going to be creating either a new HTML directory for the LP thread or translating the content into Gameproc and taking over it myself. I'll probably have to make new assets for the site and spend a long time syncing data, but this is necessary to support upcoming releases in a fluent way, I think.

A part of this process is going to be moving most existing applicable youtube content onto the FTP, including any of the Generation 1 LP's I have source files for.

No ETA on this but it's going to be a high priority if Patreon becomes a thing, since I don't want CC as an entity associated with my Patreon.

As a note, I'll still be using these threads for my content. They'll just be mirrored on the site for a more official and clean avenue. I'll probably simplify the thread a bit once it's all done and said.

/edit 5

I have the helm.

I am in control.

I am the system.

I will be spending the next (long) while off and on updating the Gameproc site to sync it with the entirety of the LP thread and my other releases (e.g. Black Sun and some unreleased articles). Then I will continue to update both the threads and the site with all future releases.

Currently the site has a refurbished and reorganization version of my About sections. I will probably copy some of the alterations/simplifications to the thread, but otherwise I think the thread is OK as it is, at least for now.

I am almost done verifying the incomplete 2013 Civ 5 game destined for the graveyard. I don't need to verify the second game I am working on because I 100% know it wasn't interrupted. I only need to make sure the encodes come out fine.

/edit 6

I am forcing stuff in and HKS and Mexicans are blindly telling me to "delete this". I am a true Web Developer now.

[KnoutOut]

congrats on becoming a web-developer!

[IskatuMesk]

Phew. I was close to losing a bunch of video data from the new civ5 run but ffmpeg once again bailed me out. Fraps had a few unintended interruptions from the game getting minimized or the other monitor sometimes taking focus, and this fucked fraps files. They were huge, but only had 1 frame of viewable data in MPC. Megui, file indexer, directshowsource, vdub, vegas, etc nothing could actually understand the files. But ffmpeg's direct copy just yanked everything out and produced a functional file.

Anyways, this civ5 game is like 1500 turns long already and it's not really close to being closed up yet.

The site has seen a little more work. I had Lavarinth update the layout to be both wider AND conform to window size. That will address some concerns raised from the schwa-chan and others, but it's far from being in an alpha state.

/edit

It sounds like we got fucked out of the second subsidy, at least for a really long time, because they needed some other piece of information to prove they are separated and it just takes an arbitrarily long time to process or something. (edit - Looks like we got doubly screwed because even if/when we get it, it, again, won't be anywhere near what they said it would be. l0l)

Also I got granny hooked on Alex Jones. Aww yiss let the good times roll

/edit 2

Alright, next round of experimental updates for the GameProc site. Best viewed here - http://www.gameproc.com/index.php?id=le ... for-asgard

1 - I added some segregation of the LP page and grouped Awards under a dynamic boarder per a suggestion from Nef. I'll still mess with it a bit. I unified some sizes a bit.
2 - Increased size of Menu text.
3 - Altered colors to a grimdark scheme for less retina rape. Although, evidently, this broke text in probably 50% of the site or more because some areas plainly don't use CSS text tags and some that do use tags I haven't changed yet. I'll address it all on a case-by-case basis before I begin syncing the site up.

/edit 3

- Lav fixed spoilers eating colors and other garbage.
- HKS figured out how to fix the css for the Award border so it doesn't break on smaller windows now.
- I trimmed the About section. I'm still figuring out more concise ways to convey certain information but it's already pretty clean compared to the thread version.

I'm pretty close to calling this page final and almost ready to translate all the other LP's over using it. That will take a long time, though, so I'll probably gradually put time into it over the coming month between my other work. In the meanwhile I'll be processing some of my articles and such to the site and trying to learn a bit more how I want formatting and stuff to look like.

/edit 4

By the way, as an unrelated notation, it is expected that you conduct yourself somewhat professionally on these forums.

[IskatuMesk]

A new AWP is now available. If the whole donation and gameproc thing is a bit much to read or follow, along with all the bullshit about cats and money, this will bring you up to speed along with talking about short term and medium term goals for my work.

Work on Gameproc continues. With the template completed on the Viking page, I am beginning the long road to transitioning youtube content to Gameproc (and disabled all Youtube LP's as a result), as well as updating the site to reflect the thread. Then I will do the opposite, updating the thread with some stuff from the site. Then we'll be totally in sync. Like, whoa. Big.

[ArcCain]

Stylish I see.

[KnoutOut]

but if the earth is going to end in 2 days, why even try so hard? Because in the end, it doesn't even matteeeeeooorrrr!

[nu1x]

but if the earth is going to end in 2 days, why even try so hard? Because in the end, it doesn't even matteeeeeooorrrr!

But thou will be judged by the standard-compliance of thy web page !

Repent !

[IskatuMesk]

Patreon has dodged me with the expected "ask a tax professional" when I pushed about the SIN and 30% tax bullshit. Since there's no way I can afford such a grand expenditure at any point in time, I've opted to just not use patreon for the time being.

I'll be setting up a donation page on Gameproc. I'll just have to deal with whatever crap Paypal sends my way if they decide to.

/edit

I hunted down a Canadian Patreon user that showed up on google results about the subject. He says merely indicating you are from Canada should make you exempt from the 30% tax.

So why didn't Patreon say that...?

[recalrico]

Lowly customer support rep is probably just following patreon's script, otherwise they get canned. Companies are afraid of being legally responsible. They don't want to get sued or something if they turn out to be wrong, even though chances are slim. Everybody is too afraid of to get entangled in legal BS, to the point of complete senselessness. Lolis aren't the only thing that will suck your soul.

[IskatuMesk]

The day people are too afraid to make basic information available is the day Billy devours us all.

/edit

Just got back from the Vet.

The cat is doing well. I can finally stop the drops and start recovering my sleep and schedule.

What a hell of a time this has been. I really would not care to ever go through something like this. I mean, no one would. But it's over... until the next time, I guess.

The vet started talking about taking the cat's hood off once we finish the pills and such, but I don't really think we can afford to risk it again. I don't really know. I don't want to see her do this to herself ever again. This time was really close. Way too close.

Now I can focus on getting work done with no more distractions.

[KnoutOut]

sweet! A salute from me for sticking through all this and even coming out ontop of all that. I'm sure the cat will appreciate that a lot, if it isn't busy knocking stuff over d:


p.s.: if you need help with rigging, I can tell you how the basics work, though I haven't really touched that in 2 years, and my entire knowledge came from the videos I sent you. It is however more than enough to BONE various characters for use in animation. If you are interested in that, just say so and I will refresh my memories and see what we can do.

[IskatuMesk]

Do you know 3ds max? Sorry, I have like, no recollection of any conversations about this stuff. The last two years kind of wiped my memory.

/edit

Nefarius has told me about a matrix option for the ConvertToYV12 command for megui. With rec709 this seems to eliminate the color crushing videos typically encounter from being encoded. All of my videos so far differ in colors from their source very slightly. While not a huge detriment to the viewing experience, typically I prefer to be as close to 1:1 as possible.

Preliminary tests seem to indicate rec709 gives 1:1 to fraps source colors. This will result in a significant quality boost and a very tiny size increase (30kb in a 1920x1200 26 CRF 8 second 6 meg League test file).

I'll test with major encodes and ensure nothing breaks. If all goes well, this will be used in all future videos and provide a fair overall quality boost alongside the 10bit encodes I am already doing.

This, plus (hopefully) leaving the staggered two years of production behind me, pushes me into Fourth Generation recordings.

[KnoutOut]

ooo shit, I thought I had that mentioned, I only have experience with blender.

[IskatuMesk]

Not terribly useful for me, haha. If you pick up 3ds max then we can definitely exchange some kind of bodily fluids.

Comparison screenshots for the color matrix thing.

http://www.gameproc.com/meskstuff/lp-ge ... SOURCE.png
^ SOURCE - Unedited fraps file.

http://www.gameproc.com/meskstuff/lp-ge ... x-none.png
^ Standard encode. afaik the command defaults to some standard color matrix that doesn't work properly, at least not with fraps source, and this has been the source of the color inconsistencies for the many years we've noted them. Note that, particularly for greens which this image particularly brings out, it's hardcore crushing colors. It may not be something you ever notice without this kind of a comparison, but it's always been there.

http://www.gameproc.com/meskstuff/lp-ge ... -PC709.png
^ PC-709. Apparently it breaks with fraps source and applies double. It looks more "vibrant" but is actually decimating the image.

http://www.gameproc.com/meskstuff/lp-ge ... Rec709.png
^ rec709. I don't know personally what the technical differences is, but it's basically 1:1 with fraps except for the minor compression artifacting from 26 CRF.

Since rec709 is no longer crushing colors, there will be a size increase. How much of an increase really remains to be seen, but it will probably be insignificant in the grand scheme of things (30kb in a 6 meg 8 second league test). Anyways, the size increase, even if it becomes significant, really pales in comparison to finally getting true 1:1 colors.

Pending further large-scale tests this will be used in all future encodes. You'll see it take effect part-way through Civ5 game 2 and Alice. I am not 100% sure if the Vegas-sourced file server encodes have this issue (like Divinity) but I'll be testing that as well.

Between this and 10bit, I expect my more demanding encodes, particularly those using 28-30CRF, to have noteworthy quality increases. In general the color fix is significant, but for those encodes, who suffered both from color depth crushing AND very intense compression that just had more reason to crush the colors further, a lot of difficulties with certain color ranges and motion will probably alleviate somewhat.

[Mucky]

Patreon has dodged me with the expected "ask a tax professional" when I pushed about the SIN and 30% tax bullshit. Since there's no way I can afford such a grand expenditure at any point in time, I've opted to just not use patreon for the time being.

Lowly customer support rep is probably just following patreon's script, otherwise they get canned. Companies are afraid of being legally responsible. They don't want to get sued or something if they turn out to be wrong, even though chances are slim. Everybody is too afraid of to get entangled in legal BS, to the point of complete senselessness. Lolis aren't the only thing that will suck your soul.

Assuming this was a phone conversation, in these situations you will want to escalate by asking to speak to a supervisor/manager. Customer service reps are hardly ever trained about their own company policies, and they will never think to redirect your question to someone who can actually help so you have to do it for them.