The Model

People don't like advertising almost as a general rule; Advertising is simply The Way It Is. People who make content learn to like it, because they want to make content, and they also want to eat food and sleep under a roof, and the opportunity to do both at the same time seems like a pretty good idea.

After the "dot com bubble," we ran the site entirely on donations for over a year. The word crowdfunding hadn't been invented yet; back then, people simply called it "begging," but I think it's clear that those days are long past. We look back on that period with incredible fondness, and I don't think we're the only ones. It was just two of us then, not the juggernaut that it is now; we have mouths to feed, as it were. I think we had assumed it wasn't possible to do it that way anymore - to operate a site at this scale without advertising dollars - but it occurred to us that we'd never actually asked. People often want to know how they can support the site in a way that doesn't involve t-shirts or looking at advertising, and I think we may have a way. What I'm saying is that we want to sell out, and we would love to sell out to you.

How Do You Intend To Do That

By doing this.

Leaderboard Ad Removed, $250k Goal

That's for the amount you see on the right. If it turns out to be something people want to see, or not see as the case may be, we'll add stretch goals to restore old services we used to offer, convert the entire site to a Creative Commons license, and ultimately remove every ad from the site for an entire year. We intend to be a company that succeeds by making things, specifically things for you, and are orienting ourselves toward that goal.

All ads on homepage removed. $525k goal

So, we're turning to you. Would scouring ads from Penny Arcade, with everything that entails, be something you’d be willing to reach into your pocket for? The more we considered it, the more we agreed it might just be. Not only would you no longer have to look at advertising when browsing Penny Arcade, but not having ads would create a chain reaction that would lead to a bunch of other interesting stuff. Without the almighty "pageview" to consider, why not populate the RSS with full comics and posts? Why not enable and even encourage apps, first and third party, for people to read it however they damn well please?

That seems pretty compelling to us, but in keeping with Kickstarter tradition we’ve greased the wheels with a buffet of backer rewards and stretch goals. This is an amazing experiment in our opinion. If it doesn’t work Penny Arcade will be fine. We’ll keep going just like before with no interruption in service and nothing will change. But if it did work, I mean, wow.



That would be something.

Stretchgoals:

Update #1: $550k Stretchgoal



One of the things that excited us most about the idea of trying an ad-free model was the amount of time it would give us to actually make comics. Currently, we do all kinds of creative services projects that are part of the existing model, but in their absence, that's all time we can put to work for you. We have a ton of weird settings, and ideas for more, that are simply not possible with the schedule the current system imposes. What we're talking about would be new projects, in settings you already like, that run ALONGSIDE the week's comics, not in their place. Like, oh, I don't know... THIS?!?

We have quite a year planned, if you're game.

CW(TB)

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Update #2: $325k Stretchgoal

Additional Revelations!

We're just revealing things right and left around here. It would be our great pleasure to acquaint you with Automata: Silverside in lieu of our typical "creative services" work. The first of these projects unlocks at $325,000, and we're chomping at the bit. Or champing at it; I can never remember if you chomp or champ. In any case, there won't be anything left of this bit by the time we're done. We're going crazy on it!

(CW)TB

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Update #4: Penny Arcade Leaderboard Stretch Goal Unlocked! Stretchgoals up to $999k revealed.

It's unbelievable, but the campaign has reached our first funding goal of $250k in four days. We've been blown away by the support thus far, and the interest from people outside the industry makes us think we might be on to something here.

As promised, we are revealing the stretch goals up to $999k ... behold! (check out the updated list up top!) The new goals we've revealed are: