Mutual aid, crowdfunding

[Kim Crawley]

If anyone needs survival money, from the Stop Gen AI crowdfund and/or group members, share your requests and crowdfunds here.

But please don’t ask specific members for donations. “Hey group, I need help with my rent!” is fine. “Hey <person’s name>, I need help with my rent!” isn’t.

Also please make a habit of sharing crowdfunds posted here to your own social media.

Thank you!

[Kim Crawley]

Let’s discuss what to do with the Itch.io game bundle I was planning.

We had a lot of great contributions but I needed technical support. I wanted to launch the bundle on June 30th, but Itch never responded to my emails and that’s the only way to contact them for tech support as a vendor!

https://itch.io/jam/stop-gen-ai-mutual-aid-charity-bundle-1

https://itch.io/b/3129/stop-gen-ai-mutual-aid-charity-bundle

Later on, I learned that Itch.io has a long, dark history of totally ignoring emails from vendors when they need help, and also of sitting on money raised by charity bundles, delaying money needed to help people going into the right hands.

Completely ignoring people when they beg for help is horrific behavior for a platform. And your typical Itch.io vendor is a poor/working class/disabled person struggling to make ends meet to survive. For shame, Itch.io!

Then the whole fascist payment processing thing hit. Many Itch.io creators are LGBTQ+, furries, and other marginalized minorities. And sometimes their games, novels, and so on feature sex between consenting adults and stuff like that.

See:

the people scolding folks for being mad at itch are being so fucking annoying like sorry that I saw my game and many others get taken down with no warning and zero communication for hours and hours

— JILLIAN F. KILLS (@killjill.itch.io) 2025-07-24T12:26:32.229Z

https://www.rascal.news/itch-io-delists-bans-games-under-pressure-from-payment-processors-and-an-australian-anti-porn-group/

Itch.io is kowtowing to fascists who are cracking down on the ability of marginalized people to survive.

So my idea is to launch our bundle on our website without Itch.io, 50% of revenue shared evenly amongst creators and 50% of revenue going to our mutual aid fund.

Cory also suggested starting a new platform as an Itch.io alternative.

What do you folks think?

Let’s discuss here and in our July 26th  meeting. I want to move forward soon.

 

 

 

[Mel C]

Very good discussion in yesterday’s (July 26th) meeting on how to move forward in regards to itch’s previous behavior and recent capitulation.

Long term, would be cool to have a full independent platform from which to have a model to facilitate further kinds of exchange and promotion of creators of various mediums and pursuits. Will wait to hear what Cory’s feedback will be.

The phrasing for a minimum donation is good, with $13 being a good amount. $20 may even be better, but would depend on what barriers pricing present in relation to who we’re trying to serve with this endeavor.

For revenue division, I’d like the focus to be on the 10% / 45% / 45%; for the 10% being for a legal fund against Itch, Visa, MasterCard, (Collective Shot?) and other groups promoting restrictive worldviews. Disability Pride Against Censorship sounds great on the surface; I would just like to be sure that the 10% division has been decided in total as a group vote.

[Mel C]

Wanted to share as part of this topic of this thread; https://ko-fi.com/hardworkingnet

I’ve been disqualified for unemployment due to the nature of how I lost my tribal job (forced to move — employer wanted me to stay there and I would have kept providing wage labor for them). I am covered for August on rent and electricity (room in landlord’s house), and I am on food stamps (landlord does not have a fully working oven).

Any donations to this goal would be used to help with services such as transportation, medical and other needs. I greatly appreciate any support.

[Kim Crawley]

>The phrasing for a minimum donation is good, with $13 being a good amount. $20 may even be better, but would depend on what barriers pricing present in relation to who we’re trying to serve with this endeavor.

Yeah, I think I came up with the $13 figure based on what I’ve seen other Itch.io bundles like ours sell for. My subconscious with an autistic savant like memory for prices stands next to Bob Barker and makes a bid my gut says will result in maximum sales and revenue. Ha.

Thank you, Mel.

Yeah, with group support and most or all contributors on board, we may be able to launch the bundle on our own in a week or two. I will start working on it tomorrow.

If you find a legal fund to donate 10% to, link it here please.

And everyone, please boost Mel’s crowdfunding on social media. On behalf of the group, I sent more money.

 

 

 

[Kim Crawley]

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/

—

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.

—

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.

—

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

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