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The short version: We currently make $89/month from the Patreon. We will need to make at least $150/month in donations to keep the site alive. That means we need at least a $61 increase per month in donations to keep going without adding ads to the site, which we really don't want to do.
The long version: Back in February, the site was experiencing major problems. The forum was crashing about once a day because the searches people were doing were too large to keep in memory. Some of you might remember having to ping me in Discord about database errors that would keep the site down completely down for hours if I wasn't awake. I tried to find a way around it with programming, but in the end I had to upgrade the server. On February 18th I made an upgrade to the server that took our costs from $70/month to $150/month.
I thought we would be fine because our Patreon was at $150/month in January, so I hadn't been paying attention to how much it was costing me. Immediately after the site was upgraded we lost a lot of patrons and our Patreon subscriptions dropped from $150 in January to $89 in February.
I have been paying the extra $61 each month to keep the site running since we upgraded in February. To put that into perspective, I am being paid negative money to run this website. I have been willing to deal with it because I love this community, but unfortunately it has become impossible for me to keep paying it. I have had some financial setbacks including replacing my totaled car and a substantial increase in rent, and I am no longer able to pay my bills with my income.
If we cannot pay this bill then we cannot keep the site alive.
The only other option we have at this point, if don't reach our goal, is to add advertisements to the website, which we have been against since day one.
Things that your donations will pay for:
Keeping ads off the site
Keeping the site running smoothly with no hiccups
Having a place specially designed to host the Mafia Championship
Keeping Partner communities alive when they already lost their home community
My completely automated Mafia gaming system, which makes this the best site to play Mafia on the net (AKA Modbot)
Continual and near-instant Modbot and webite support
Things would be lost if Mafia Universe goes down:
Access to anything, including your old games
The best forum mafia system on the web
The entire history of the Mafia Championship
A home base for Partner communities who had already lost their home community
Please subscribe to help keep Mafia Universe going!
Mafia Universe was created in May 2015, just after the second World Championship series, with just six users on staff. The project had several goals:
To unite Mafia players and communities from all over the world, to bring them together and create bonds of friendship through inter-community interaction. To further the game of Mafia itself by putting people from all walks of life together in a place where they're empowered to share ideas and invent new, fun ways to play the game. This was the most important goal, and how the site got its name — Mafia Universe, where Mafia players and communities unite!
To seamlessly integrate Mafia-enhancing features with a bulletin board format to give users the tools necessary to play the game as easily as possible.
To completely automate a forum Mafia game from start to finish, including all game mechanics and player interactions, without the need for a human host to process or resolve anything.
To gather, store, and provide centralized access to a comprehensive Mafia player database and statistics both from the Mafia Universe site and elsewhere on the internet.
Since then the site has grown to the point where we now have over 3,400 users, 40 staff members, and more than 2,000,000 posts — we can boast record-breaking player counts, several yearly cross-community events, a ton of awesome features; and most important of all, a friendly, welcoming and fun-loving community.
Up to now, I have been paying for the entire site out of my pocket without ad revenue. I have been committed to never showing ads, and have previously turned down offers to donate money. I now believe that accepting those donation requests makes sense and that pride should not get in the way of what we are building.
At the suggestions of several users, we are introducing a Patreon. It works by subscribing to pay a small amount on a monthly basis (which can be cancelled at any time). Our Patreon and more information can be found here: https://www.patreon.com/MafiaUniverse
We turned to Patreon because the needs of the site have grown with each Championship, and some of our goals need an extra boost to become possible.
For details about what donating means, check the tabs at the bottom of this post. PM me or Makaze if you have any questions about our policy.
The one goal we have yet to complete is the database. We have tried several developers throughout the years, but none of them have completed it.
Creating the database will now be a paid project. There is no minimum requirement and the feature is not being held at ransom, but the more we receive, the more time we can devote to the database and other much needed features for our community.
How it will be used: We have settled on 50% going to server costs, and 50% going to feature creators. Excess beyond the server needs will go to feature creators unless upgrades or paid plugins are added.
Minimum goal:It will take at least $150/month to cover the server costs and keep us from going down.
We have offered several Rewards for donating that our users might want, as incentive to contribute (to reward you for helping the site keep going). Check the tab below for what these are.
Thank you for your support and for being a part of our Mafia Universe!
100% of donations will go toward the server costs until the server cost is paid off.
If the total of donations exceeds server needs, the excess will go to developers until the server is upgraded or paid plugins are added.
Patrons can receive the following rewards depending on pay tier:
Access to a private Patron subforum (to discuss requests and contributor-related issues/topics)
Access to a private Patron discord channel
A Donor award icon
Choose a custom site emoticon that will be active as long as you are subscribed
Choose a custom usertitle on the forum to be active as long as you are subscribed; can be changed once per pay period (includes colors & emotes in usertitles)
Choose a custom Discord emoji for use in the Mafia Universe discord server (Limited by the total allowed by Discord)
Contributions to Mafia Universe are donations. Contributing via Patreon is not equivalent to purchasing a product or subscribing to a service.
Donation rewards are not guarantees. Any promised rewards are given outside of the transaction and can be rescinded at any time without impacting past donations.
Donating does not constitute a bribe and does not afford you extra powers. Patrons will not have higher chances to become moderators, learn private information about other users, change the Code of Conduct, or otherwise bend the boundaries of ethical behavior on Mafia Universe.
All donations are non-refundable, but you can stop donating at any time without penalty (aside from not getting rewards).
To add a custom emoticon: PM a moderator and cite that you are a Patreon contributor (with relevant information). Provide a reliable link to the image you want to add and provide the text trigger you would like the emoticon to have.
To add a custom emoji: PM a moderator on Discord and cite that you are a Patreon contributor (with relevant information). Provide a reliable link to the image you want to add and provide the text trigger you would like the emoji to have.
To change your usertitle: PM a moderator once per month (every 30 days), and cite that you are a Patreon contributor (with relevant information).
Contributions will not afford any special privileges with moderators. Patrons have to abide by the same rules as other users both in a game and in the Code of Conduct, and moderators will not be more lenient because of Patron status.
If you are banned, your usertitle will display as Banned group and you will lose access to the Patron subforum until your ban has lifted.
Single Donations
Multiple users requested the option to donate a single time with PayPal. A single payment option is available, with the following caveats.
This kind of donation is harder to track, cannot be tallied with Patreon, and is harder to split. PayPal takes a percentage of each transfer. If you plan to donate and have me receive a flat amount, you may have to donate more than you wanted so that I get that amount on my end. Check PayPal's ToS for more info.
Single donations go towards Makaze, and will not be split with the server
Single donations are not counted towards the monthly goal
Single donors will get the Donor award icon
If a donation is divisible by the Patreon reward tiers, the donor may get rewards equivalent to donating monthly until the amount exceeds their donation (e.g. $50 donation is equivalent to 5 months at $10 or 10 months at $5, whichever they prefer)
We are working on possibly creating some merch, but we cannot rely on one-time purchases to maintain the site's consistent needs. We are looking to update the Patreon rewards in the near future to things that people would actually want, and we could use your help with finding out what that is.
If you have any feedback on the following two questions, please let us know:
What Patreon rewards would you be excited about?
How opposed would you be to putting ads on the site?
Last edited by Makaze; June 14th, 2021 at 11:50 AM.
[12:09 pm] Cory Curren: remember that we are marking down all of your reads to hold for our personal amusement
[12:09 pm] Cory Curren: anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of lol
Thank you for notifying us of this, Makaze, and thank you for all you do to support MU, both logistically and financially.
Is it possible to create additional tiers for Patreon? I would be happy to donate more than $10/month, but cannot afford $50. Even if they come without any major additional perks, something in-between would be great. I don't have any ideas for rewards at the moment but I'll give it some good thought.
Also, when you say ads, what exactly does that mean? How invasive are they? What kind of ads? If that's something you're able to disclose that would be helpful. I know POG has ads and they're fine, and other sites have ads and they're miserable to swim through.
Thanks.
Last edited by Beck; June 13th, 2021 at 07:38 PM.
leaping up into the air getting juiced up beyond belief
We can add multiple tiers, but if the perks don't matter to you, then you can just enter a custom amount on your own. I'm pretty sure you don't have to use the tiers when subscribing.
If we had ads it would be banner ads on the top and bottom of each page, similar to POG.
Last edited by Makaze; June 13th, 2021 at 08:36 PM.
[12:09 pm] Cory Curren: remember that we are marking down all of your reads to hold for our personal amusement
[12:09 pm] Cory Curren: anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of lol
HEY $%#!S
Since some people obviously don't know this, even though it should be BASIC COMMON SENSE, I guess i have to point it out. if you are PR, and are about to be misyeeted, YOU NEED TO CLAIM. You need to claim with at least 45 seconds, preferably 1 minute left so that people have time to refresh and unvote you. If you claim at 30 seconds, if you claim at 15 seconds, if you don't claim at all, YOU WILL BE MISYEETED. PR staying alive is extremely important for town. There was a post on the general mafia forum about win rates when PR is yeeted D1 in turbos and its 1/14 or some $%#!.
I'm not going to call this gamethrowing, because some new players might not understand how important PR is to a setup, and others come from sites where you can't claim as PR. But please, for the love of god, claim if you're being killed. Thank you.
Copypasta over.
Originally Posted by King Bowser1633155904
(#5246)
Just picture King Bowser wearing baggy cargo pants, and trying to shove an enormous fluffy and supremely enraged kitty into his pockets all game, and all that happens is the cat keeps biting him and clawing him and tearing up his scaly flesh, while hissing and screeching with rage the whole time.
Yet King Bowser is just as stubborn and insists the kitty goes in his pocket, despite numerous failed attempts.
In the end, kitty was never pocketed. Did not survive the process, but left Bowser bloody and shredded and looking quite the fool.
Then everyone else in town is like, dude, Bowser, what happened to your faaaaaace. And your cat.
I uh... cut myself shaving. I'm still totally townie, honest.
We can add multiple tiers, but if the perks don't matter to you, then you can just enter a custom amount on your own. I'm pretty sure you don't have to use the tiers when subscribing.
If we had ads it would be banner ads on the top and bottom of each page, similar to POG.
I don’t use Patreon much so I wasn’t sure that was an option, I’ll do that.
leaping up into the air getting juiced up beyond belief
i) Personally, I don’t care about patreon rewards all that much. The biggest good that you provide is the forum itself, with all its technologically advanced feature. All I really want is for the site to keep running efficiently, which already seems to be the case. Sorry if that’s not constructive enough, but it’s hard for me to believe that there are people out there whose decision on whether to donate or not depends on an undertitle or such.
ii) I do not love ads, but if they are necessary, I will deal with them, and I think most active users will as well. Just as long as you avoid pop-up ads, of course.
Last edited by UncleDynamite; June 13th, 2021 at 10:33 PM.
i talked about this a little bit in the patron chat on the discord, but i would significantly prefer for there to be ads on the site if it means it stays up and running. i appreciate the concern for user convenience, however. the reason i contributed is mostly to help reach the goal that has been set, but if it also contributes to there being no ads on the site, then that's great. nobody exactly likes ads anyways, and i'm not different.
also, i added for whenever you need to shank someone. i'm sure it's versatile :>
I can donate in a couple weeks. Hope that's not too late.
I'm skeptical of the utility of ads. Perhaps the landscape has changed since I was last involved in ad work, but it didn't pay very well. Maybe the nature of playing Mafia (constant page-loads) ups the return?
Something to consider with ads, in the "yeah avoid them" nature...I have been on some sites where page load times were affected by the ad servers, and not in a good way. It is always best to avoid ads if we can.
That said, my book releases on the 20th <shameless plug>
Apperently my creditcard got blocked in January, didnt know this as i normally only use debit cards.
So thanks for this msg. Hadnt checked the bank in a few months, were 4 msgs with basically threatening to close the acc if i dont provide tonsa info before june 20th. Well last msg said june 8th but it seems saveable so thx friend 👍
Ill set it up again when they open up the acc and card again
I'd personally rather spend money on merch which not only supports the site but also gives me something tangible in return. But I understand that's the least simple solution.
I'd be happy to donate in the future, and I am more than certain I will have spare money once my student aid comes in sometime in August or September. I'll see what I can do for this month as well as July.
EDIT: Also, while I'm not a fan of ads, I wouldn't mind them as a last resort solution.
HEY $%#!S
Since some people obviously don't know this, even though it should be BASIC COMMON SENSE, I guess i have to point it out. if you are PR, and are about to be misyeeted, YOU NEED TO CLAIM. You need to claim with at least 45 seconds, preferably 1 minute left so that people have time to refresh and unvote you. If you claim at 30 seconds, if you claim at 15 seconds, if you don't claim at all, YOU WILL BE MISYEETED. PR staying alive is extremely important for town. There was a post on the general mafia forum about win rates when PR is yeeted D1 in turbos and its 1/14 or some $%#!.
I'm not going to call this gamethrowing, because some new players might not understand how important PR is to a setup, and others come from sites where you can't claim as PR. But please, for the love of god, claim if you're being killed. Thank you.
Copypasta over.
Originally Posted by King Bowser1633155904
(#5246)
Just picture King Bowser wearing baggy cargo pants, and trying to shove an enormous fluffy and supremely enraged kitty into his pockets all game, and all that happens is the cat keeps biting him and clawing him and tearing up his scaly flesh, while hissing and screeching with rage the whole time.
Yet King Bowser is just as stubborn and insists the kitty goes in his pocket, despite numerous failed attempts.
In the end, kitty was never pocketed. Did not survive the process, but left Bowser bloody and shredded and looking quite the fool.
Then everyone else in town is like, dude, Bowser, what happened to your faaaaaace. And your cat.
I uh... cut myself shaving. I'm still totally townie, honest.
HEY $%#!S
Since some people obviously don't know this, even though it should be BASIC COMMON SENSE, I guess i have to point it out. if you are PR, and are about to be misyeeted, YOU NEED TO CLAIM. You need to claim with at least 45 seconds, preferably 1 minute left so that people have time to refresh and unvote you. If you claim at 30 seconds, if you claim at 15 seconds, if you don't claim at all, YOU WILL BE MISYEETED. PR staying alive is extremely important for town. There was a post on the general mafia forum about win rates when PR is yeeted D1 in turbos and its 1/14 or some $%#!.
I'm not going to call this gamethrowing, because some new players might not understand how important PR is to a setup, and others come from sites where you can't claim as PR. But please, for the love of god, claim if you're being killed. Thank you.
Copypasta over.
Originally Posted by King Bowser1633155904
(#5246)
Just picture King Bowser wearing baggy cargo pants, and trying to shove an enormous fluffy and supremely enraged kitty into his pockets all game, and all that happens is the cat keeps biting him and clawing him and tearing up his scaly flesh, while hissing and screeching with rage the whole time.
Yet King Bowser is just as stubborn and insists the kitty goes in his pocket, despite numerous failed attempts.
In the end, kitty was never pocketed. Did not survive the process, but left Bowser bloody and shredded and looking quite the fool.
Then everyone else in town is like, dude, Bowser, what happened to your faaaaaace. And your cat.
I uh... cut myself shaving. I'm still totally townie, honest.
heartfelt farewell being bottom of the top 5 is peak MU and I couldn't be more proud
♫ Let it all burn down around us ♫
♫ Let the cruel consume the just ♫
♫ Let the sin we swim in drown us ♫
♫ Let the world shatter ♫
♫ Into dust ♫
♫ Nothing else matters ♫
♫ Only us ♫
[12:09 pm] Cory Curren: remember that we are marking down all of your reads to hold for our personal amusement
[12:09 pm] Cory Curren: anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of lol
The universe decided to throw me one and the other shoe has dropped today.
My laptop has completely died and I am typing this post from my phone.
After wrestling with it for half of the day, I've decided to add a temporary one-time goal to help me replace it, as much as that stings. I've made that goal at $500, what should be enough to pay for a cheaper laptop on top of the website expenses. If anyone would like to help me directly you can use the Donate via PayPal link at the bottom of the site. If you do that I will get it immediately.
Some of you might already know about it, but for anyone who might want to know what happened: at around midday yesterday my laptop started behaving weird by freezing completely and not responding to any mouse or keyboard movement. It started to work after I rebooted but it froze up again after about 10 minutes, and then the screen started showing blue static over the entire screen with a bunch of vertical bars. I rebooted it again but it wouldn't get past choosing the operating system and just stayed at a black screen. I decided to try and boot Windows instead of Ubuntu and I got an automatic BIOS update that stopped at 61% and would not continue.
I managed to force shut down and reboot it into the BIOS recovery mode and got it to finish. From there it was working okay for all of last night until midday today.
Halfway through some of my coursework for my summer class today, the screen started showing some static and then it shut itself off and rebooted, but it never went past a black screen and the caps lock key would flash five times slowly and then three or four times fast. I have tried to taking it apart and cleaning it out but it is still doing the same thing. One of our users CerealLord has informed me that this is a "motherboard failure" error code and that my laptop is completely fried.
For those of you worrying I have found a way to do my coursework. I have a physical textbook and an old laptop. Even though the keyboard and screen do not work I have been able to hook them up to my TV to use as a monitor and I can use the on-screen keyboard and my phone as a remote so I can at least enter basic text.
I have ordered an adapter that should let me get the data from the old hard drive but it might take me a few days to get back to working conditions.
I'm going buy a new laptop probably within the next few days, but I'm going to have to put it on credit because of the bills that I mentioned when I posted on the website a few days ago. I am struggling to pay my bills and anyhing you guys can do to help me pay this off would mean the world to me.
On a an extremely happy note, some of you may have noticed that we actually exceeded our cost for the website within less than a day of asking for donations, and we have already almost exceeded the amount it would take to meet our 50/50 budget like we originally planned. We are an awesome community and I want you guys to know how
Thank you guys for everything you've already done for me and the website just in the past few days. I did not have any idea that we would meet the demands and was sure we would need ads before the end of the month but you guys completely blew my expectations and gave me hope for the site.
[12:09 pm] Cory Curren: remember that we are marking down all of your reads to hold for our personal amusement
[12:09 pm] Cory Curren: anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of lol
The universe decided to throw me one and the other shoe has dropped today.
My laptop has completely died and I am typing this post from my phone.
After wrestling with it for half of the day, I've decided to add a temporary one-time goal to help me replace it, as much as that stings. I've made that goal at $500, what should be enough to pay for a cheaper laptop on top of the website expenses. If anyone would like to help me directly you can use the Donate via PayPal link at the bottom of the site. If you do that I will get it immediately.
Some of you might already know about it, but for anyone who might want to know what happened: at around midday yesterday my laptop started behaving weird by freezing completely and not responding to any mouse or keyboard movement. It started to work after I rebooted but it froze up again after about 10 minutes, and then the screen started showing blue static over the entire screen with a bunch of vertical bars. I rebooted it again but it wouldn't get past choosing the operating system and just stayed at a black screen. I decided to try and boot Windows instead of Ubuntu and I got an automatic BIOS update that stopped at 61% and would not continue.
I managed to force shut down and reboot it into the BIOS recovery mode and got it to finish. From there it was working okay for all of last night until midday today.
Halfway through some of my coursework for my summer class today, the screen started showing some static and then it shut itself off and rebooted, but it never went past a black screen and the caps lock key would flash five times slowly and then three or four times fast. I have tried to taking it apart and cleaning it out but it is still doing the same thing. One of our users CerealLord has informed me that this is a "motherboard failure" error code and that my laptop is completely fried.
For those of you worrying I have found a way to do my coursework. I have a physical textbook and an old laptop. Even though the keyboard and screen do not work I have been able to hook them up to my TV to use as a monitor and I can use the on-screen keyboard and my phone as a remote so I can at least enter basic text.
I have ordered an adapter that should let me get the data from the old hard drive but it might take me a few days to get back to working conditions.
I'm going buy a new laptop probably within the next few days, but I'm going to have to put it on credit because of the bills that I mentioned when I posted on the website a few days ago. I am struggling to pay my bills and anyhing you guys can do to help me pay this off would mean the world to me.
On a an extremely happy note, some of you may have noticed that we actually exceeded our cost for the website within less than a day of asking for donations, and we have already almost exceeded the amount it would take to meet our 50/50 budget like we originally planned. We are an awesome community and I want you guys to know how
Thank you guys for everything you've already done for me and the website just in the past few days. I did not have any idea that we would meet the demands and was sure we would need ads before the end of the month but you guys completely blew my expectations and gave me hope for the site.
Keep being amazing.
And for anyone who didn't already know, everything programming related or so is all done by Mak! Invaluable tbh
[12:09 pm] Cory Curren: remember that we are marking down all of your reads to hold for our personal amusement
[12:09 pm] Cory Curren: anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of lol
I can donate in a couple weeks. Hope that's not too late.
I'm skeptical of the utility of ads. Perhaps the landscape has changed since I was last involved in ad work, but it didn't pay very well. Maybe the nature of playing Mafia (constant page-loads) ups the return?
Click "Reload" to fetch new posts without leaving the page.
Automatic thread refreshing has been stopped because you appear to be idle. Un-Idle
- Reload
Originally Posted by Thingyman
Quote
for whenever you need to shank someone. i'm sure it's versatile :>
