Hey guys! So... I've been on Deviantart for a long time, I've made a few friends here. But I'm distancing myself from this community. It's not you guys! I love you guys. A lot of you that I talk to, I talk to on multiple sites, and I'd love to keep doing that.
But this site has been concerning me for a while. It's overcrowded, the rules are unevenly enforced (when they're enforced at all) and the staff seems to... how should I put this... encourage drama. And from the standpoint of a freelancer, this isn't a great place to work as... well, the market is consistently under-priced. And now they've done...
this.
The most recent change - the 'commissions' page where you can only pay and be paid in points, which <i>cannot be converted to real money according to Deviantart's OWN terms of service</i> is another strike against it for me. My main income is from art commissions - I can't accept points as a valid currency. Even if I didn't have to worry about bills and was just working for fun money, I <i>wouldn't</i> accept points as currency. That makes no sense. If I'm paid via paypal, I pay a fee for the service, and the remainder of the money I can use as I like and where I like. Deviantart points are only usable <i>on Deviantart,</i> for goods and services offered on the site. Not cool, especially because their own PR post about it fails to mention that while talking about 'monetizing' artwork.
I wouldn't be surprised if their next move is to ban commissions that don't use their points system at all. This is a sketchy move from a site that's given its user base very little incentive to trust it in recent years and I think for me, actually the final straw necessary to leave.
Maybe they'll change this. Maybe they'll make it possible to convert points back to money, or to ask for money instead of points in the first place (at the current time, their commissions app allows you to see the USD equivalent of the points amount charge, but only has 'points' as the currency option). But I'm... not willing to hold my breath.
I'll still post on here using Postybirb for the foreseeable future, and I'll check in a few times a month to answer messages. But I'm not really active on here any more, so if you want to chat with me or commission me, you'd be better off contacting me on FurAffinity. If you just want to look at art, well, that will still be posted here, so continue as you are.
Thanks for the long ride, everyone, and I hope you're doing well!
If you'd like to reliably contact me, I'm Rococospade on FurAffinity - and twitter, and Weasyl, pixiv, tumblr, ko-fi, Patreon - all of those. I'm most active on Furaffinity and Patreon. I hope I'll see some of you there, and thank you again for your kindness over the years! You have my best wishes <3
Edit: I spoke to :devNeon-Dusk: about it a little more and it's not as bad as my original information points to. Apparently you can convert points to currency <i>only in the case of</i> earning them via the commissions widgets on the site. They also may charge a fee to non-premium members, which isn't ideal but would be pretty standard (Paypal, Stripe and Cash all charge their own fees). I'm still not comfortable using it, but, take that information as you will. (And another big thanks to Neon because I would have had no idea had they not told me, I haven't had much luck with the help section.)
Edit 2: And a thank you for :devkokotea: who, along with Neon-Dusk, was considerably more informative than the original post from Deviantart. Yes, you can convert points to USD if they're earned via your Shop page in eclipse, whether that be Prints or Commissions. But there's a fee for non-premium members. The fee is 20%. For comparison, Paypal's fee usually ends up being anywhere from 3-6%.
Edit 3: So I'm told that the 20% fee is covered when you purchase the points... which still seems obscenely high to me. All of these edits are based on the statements of other users, which is super kind of them and I'm really grateful they took the time to respond to me and share their knowledge. Conversely, the fact that the staff didn't cover this in their official post is... troubling.
