Here’s the email I sent to all of the bundle contributors just now:

Hello everyone!

Sorry for the long delay.

In the weeks before the whole Itch.io payment processing incident (they removed a ton of games, books, and comics because fascists bullied Visa, MasterCard, and Itch.io), I was super frustrated with Itch.io and their lack of tech support.

I wanted to launch the bundle on June 30th, but there were technical issues that I couldn’t understand. I emailed Itch.io support at support@itch.io for several weeks, and they completely ignored me.

It was extremely stressful and my limited amount of spoons from being autistic, ADHD, and trying to survive got overtaxed.

Every day operation of Stop Gen AI, writing my book, and gaming occupied my time while I dreaded how Itch kept ignoring me and delaying our fundraiser.

In the wake of the payment processor censorship incident that hit about a week ago where Itch removed many thousands of games and other art  from this platform with absolutely zero warning, I learned Itch has a tendency to completely ignore vendors and creators. Horrifying.

And  hear other horror stores of charity bundles being successful but then Itch just sits on the money for months and months and months.

We can launch the Stop Gen AI fundraising bundle off of Itch. That way, Itch gets none of the revenue, and we aren’t dependent on them and their brutal disrespect for users and creators, ignoring us.

One of our Stop Gen AI members is a lawyer, and they offered to work with me on a contract where I and all bundle contributors can agree to how we’re going to split the bundle revenue and make sure every creator maintains control of their art.

On the Stop Gen AI forums, I proposed two different revenue sharing plans:

https://stopgenai.com/forums/topic/mutual-aid-crowdfunding/

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In the first possible plan, we find a crowdfund someone else has to raise money for creators to sue Itch, Visa, etc. If that fund exists on GoFundMe, Chuffed, or wherever, we could do this:

45% to the Stop Gen AI mutual aid fund. stopgenai.com/fundraising

45% split amongst creators evenly. So if 16 creators agree to join our self-hosted bundle, each creator gets (45% divided by 16) of the total revenue. If only ten people agree to move their work to our self hosted bundle, then it’d be (45% divided by 10), so each of you would get 4.5%!

And then 10% to the legal fund someone else is running, to  sue Itch, etc.

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The second possible plan could be what we go with if we cannot find a good legal crowdfund to donate 10%. So…

50% to the Stop Gen AI mutual aid fund. stopgenai.com/fundraising

50% split amongst creators evenly.

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What do you folks think?

Please reply here, or better yet… Email me at kim.crawley@stopgenai.com

If you say you’re interested in my plan, then I will work with our group’s lawyer to send you a prospective contract to protect your legal rights. You only commit to this idea if you sign the contract. If you don’t sign, then our bundle won’t include your art, and you can go on with your life.

Thanks for your patience,

Kim