Hey folks! This will be a longer post detailing some changes that are coming up for Duckfeed in the next few months. When we ask listeners what they like about the network, they'll often bring up our transparency. It's one of our main values, so that's why we will be providing the rationale for each announcement so you know why we're making the changes. There will be a TL;DR at the end for those who just want to see what's changing. Big TL;DR at the top: Nobody's prices are raising. Quite the contrary. If you're grandfathered you're still grandfathered, and you'll be getting more stuff. If you've paid attention this summer, you've noticed that we've been doing some new stuff... like actually promoting ourselves on social media. This is the result of conversations we're having about the future of the network, what's working, what isn't, and most of all how we can grow. We've taken information we gathered in the most recent surveys and making these changes to hopefully get bigger as a network. In order to grow, we are simplifying our Patreon, offering more, and changing what it means for shows and episodes to be premium or public. Additionally, we are removing self-imposed limitations on our most popular shows in order to plan more effectively and intentionally and ultimately make a better product. With all of that in mind, here we go: One paid membership tier at $7Splitting show offerings across multiple tiers sucks to communicate about! It's muddled. If you come to Duckfeed and want to give us money, we want it to be easy to understand what you're getting, and the most valuable thing we can offer is content. So everyone who wants premium content will back at the Duck tier at $7 monthly, or $77 per year, and you'll get everything. This includes everything that is currently premium, even things that are currently at the Eagle tier. We want people to hear Adaptation Decay and QuakStak! You'll also get anything we cook up for Duckfeed Presents, or limited run seasonal series like Future CIA Torture Songs. This will be in addition to a Free Tier which gets you access to our Discord community. There will be higher tiers that are strictly suggestions for people who want to support us more out of the kindness of their hearts. We will be leaving your pledges in place as they are, just changing what is available at the available tiers. If you are currently grandfathered at the $5 tier, you will still get the extra content. Fewer premium shows, more premium episodesOur most popular shows, the ones featuring Gary and Kaye hosting together, will all be moving to the same premium model that Watch Out for Fireballs! is on. That is, the shows will be public but one episode per month will be premium. Specifically, this change affects Abject Suffering, Real Lich Hours, Unfilmable, and Bonfireside Chat (when it comes back). Everything to Guppy, The Level, Adaptation Decay, and QuakStak are unchanged. It makes the most sense to us to spread the WOFF! model across the network to make things more uniform. And it works better with the aforementioned Patreon tier changes. We understand that it will be awkward for a public listener to have those gaps, but if they like the show we want them to patronize us... and we're sick of pretending we don't want them to! What this means for Real Lich Hours: The timeframe for Real Lich Hours episodes going (mostly) public is ASAP. What this means for Abject Suffering: One Abject Suffering episode per month will be premium, and this will be communicated. A Note on Bonfireside Chat and the Duskbloods: We do not know if Bonfireside Chat is coming back for the Duskbloods. The network test made it feel like more Nightreign and thus resistant to our treatment. There are changes coming to the full version that might make it more suitable. Keep an ear out. Content that was released as premium previously will remain premium unless we opt to make it public for promotional reasons. Unfilmable is going weeklyUnfilmable is consistently the most popular show on our Patreon that doesn't somehow relate to FromSoft. We're very proud of it, we love doing it, we want to do more of it, and we want more people to hear it. To that end, Unfilmable will be released weekly, with one episode per month being premium. This will necessitate some changes in format. Do you remember our episode on The Substance? A looser conversation rather than a play by play? More episodes will follow that format. Going weekly also opens the door for more easy coverage of a TV show (multi-part coverage goes down easier weekly, we find). We're also going to broaden the scope of what's covered. We've already gone from strictly horror to the Feel-Bad Rainbow, with some real genre bends (American Movie, Gremlins 2). We're going to have genre bends more often now, as a treat. Unfilmable will be the steady parade of bleakness and terror you love, but sometimes we might talk about, I dunno, Total Recall or Wayne's World or something. Think Pee-Wee's Big Adventure. We gotta talk about Large Marge somehow. Unfilmable will be a place for media talk that doesn't fit Adaptation Decay. With this, we're retiring our "TV slot" with the end of Best Quality Vacuum. Promised coverage of Review will happen under the Unfilmable banner (We would argue it's extremely bleak TV), at a non Episode by Episode pace. This is a hard decision! We like talking about TV, but the truth is it's not a very popular show on our network, and covering a single TV show alienates a big group of our audience who has no interest in that show. By rolling such coverage into Unfilmable, we'll be able to talk about stuff we love but not commit to an entire show that comparatively few people will listen to. Timeframe: Unfilmable will go weekly once Best Quality Vacuum ends. However, it will become a public show earlier than that, basically as soon as possible. Also on the Unfilmable tip, we are raising the price to $300 for a sponsorship in order to accommodate demand. This comes with a widened scope for what we'll accept as a sponsorship. Sponsoring works like The Terror is no longer untenable. Watch Out for Fireballs! is changing more subtlyThe changes we're making to Watch Out for Fireballs! are more procedural on our end, but we believe they will result in a better show. Specifically we will be changing sponsored episodes and relaxing about game length in order to do more two-parters. Our goal is to be able to plan further in advance and to do so more intentionally. We are going to be limiting sponsorships to 3 per quarter, at $450 apiece. This change comes with increased scope for what your sponsorship money will get you. This doesn't mean we'll do everything, but we will be more open to longer games under this new schema. We will be opening up each quarter's sponsorship sales a few months in advance, for planning purposes. That means when you are reading this, Q1 2027 sponsorships are open, and when they're sold they're sold. We are also divorcing specific types of games from specific seasons. Having a Summer JRPG and a Winter WRPG were both comforting rhythms for us, but they would be an awkward fit for how we want to plan out a better variety of long and short games of different genres and profiles each quarter. Premium WOFF! episodes aren't going anywhere but occasionally the month's premium will be Part 2 of longer coverage, which is something we've avoided doing in the past. Why are we doing this? It's worth noting we're actually going to lose money by reducing the number of sponsorships we take in a year, but we're doing it anyway because we want more flexibility. Right now, we get in a bind, being booked out 6-9 months with sponsorships, and trying to fit small games around large games. We also want to talk about more kinds of games, including, big games a lot of people have played. We love getting exposed to obscure indies through our audience, but I think in the last year or so we've lost the balance. WOFF! is our flagship program, and we want to make it the best show we can. That's basically it! This is a lot of changes, but we've thought long and hard about them in relation to the data from the surveys you answered. Our hope is to make the Patreon more attractive, simple, and comprehensive. We also want to take a firmer hand over our content schedule to cover a wider variety of games on our flagship show Watch Out for Fireballs!, and give you more volume and variety of media covered on Unfilmable. The timetable for when these changes will take place is currently up in the air (excepting the ones outlined firmly above), but expect the bulk to hit around the beginning of 2027. If you have any questions, please ask them. There are always little things we haven't thought of, but we will do our best to answer whatever you ask. Because like we said, we want to be as transparent as possible. With love, Gary and Kaye TL;DRAll of our premium content is being bundled up into one tier, Duck, which will be priced at $7. The Free Tier grants access to our Discord Community. Unfilmable is going weekly in the new year and we're going to cover different kinds of media from time to time. We are retiring our "TV Slot" to sometimes talk TV on Unfilmable. Most shows will be public, with one premium episode per month, a la Watch Out for Fireballs. This applies to Abject Suffering, Bonfireside Chat when it returns, Real Lich Hours, and Unfilmable (in addition to Watch Out for Fireballs!). This will start immediately for the applicable shows. Watch Out for Fireballs! sponsorships are increasing to $450 and we will sell three of them per quarter, and longer games will fit into this. Unfilmable sponsorships are increasing to $300 and will be limited to 6 per quarter.
