Is a "Support Vireio" Button Worth It? How to do it?

[Neil]

Hello everyone!

It's a regular occurrence that people tell us to have a "donate" button for Vireio because it is free and open source software. This would of course be very helpful because we are limited by our available games library for testing and debugging. Without having the actual games, it's near impossible to correct crashes or have VRBoost profiles made in advance.

Here's the thing. We can't use a "donate" button because MTBS isn't a registered charity. So, if we hit $10,000, PayPal could hold our money back and it could all be lost revenue.

The solution is to have a "Buy" button with several denomination choices. Or even multiples of denominations. In my opinion, given the limited size of the market, unless denominations start at $20 or more, it's not worth the energy. The software would still be 100% free; this is just an alternative method of raising much needed development funds.

Another option we are looking at is having a private Vireio Developers' Steam account, and accepting Steam Wallet gift cards. Accepting game keys is a bad idea because if there are duplicates in the library, it would be a waste. I'm not sure if this can be done, but we are exploring this.

So here are my questions:

1. While there are a handful of people who expressed interest in supporting the cause, what is a reasonable range of support denominations?
2. Is there an easy way to grow a developers' Steam Wallet so we can buy the right games when we need them? Is there a Paypal to Vireio Steam Wallet possibility?
3. I'm aware of being able to buy Steam Wallet online gift cards. This is a last resort because I don't want a scenario of entering countless $5 gift cards - that takes a lot of time and energy that could be spent on Vireio development.

Are there other options we hadn't considered?

All feedback and ideas are welcome.

Regards,
Neil

[rduncan20]

You could use something like bitpay to accept bitcoin donations, it would automatically convert it to USD and send it to a verified bank account. It has a flat 1% fee though. Just throwing out ideas.

[Lark]

I'm not sure what the best method would be. That said I'm not a bit coin guy but I would like to buy you a beer/coffee.

[skyrimer]

I think that $10 should be the entry point, $20 is a bit too much for a donation kind of thing.

I don't have any idea abouthow to setup this kind of thing, sorry, maybe someone else could help.

[Neil]

I think our prayers have been answered!

I just received this email:

Attn
We have finally arranged to transfer your $4,500,000.00 USD through
western union. We were able to accomplish this through the help of Mr.
Gabriel Bello of federal high court of justice and every necessary
arrangement has been made successfully with the western union
Hon. Daniel Iwu.Contact the director with your
information, your phone number, address,Occupation, city,and your receiver's
name.
Contact the director on :+XXX-XXXXXXXX, And you are to send them their
official keeping fee of $105 only.

Kind Regards
Mrs.Nnenna Onuorah

Awesome!

In fact, I've been getting these emails almost every day. Woohoo!

Regards,
Neil

[anon84]

ok I mention something pretty obvious now, but it took me until just now to realise this, so maybe you might not have realised it either :)
(just checked back to when you posted this on reddit, that's when I first saw it, says 1 day ago, I would have sworn it was a week ago! glad I'm not as slow as I thought then :) )

I thought about how many games $10k would buy and that's when I realised it's more than enough.
at $20 a game that's 500 games... and 20$ is generous because in steam sales most AAA go $10 or under unless they were only just recently released. The recent sale was just crazy you could have stocked up on pretty much every desired VR title (where vireio required) for a tiny fraction of that 10K limit.
I don't think many people could even name 500 games, let alone your guys have the time to test 500 of them, got the impression just 1 game alone (skyrim) took a while to do.

I do realise though you are probably looking to make a profit on the side out of it :) so maybe you looked at a $10k limit and thought that's not worth it, but if you just think about how many games it can buy it's plenty, there's even enough to buy a GPU of each vendor, although this might be considered a controversial use of the donations.

Should be simple for you to set up a script that tracks the donation total then disables it when near the $10k limit.

[Neil]

If you Google "Donate Button" and "limitations", you will see that it can get problematic. I'd be thrilled if $10K landed in our lap. However, even if we managed such a thing, I think there is a risk that PayPal would hold it back.

Google around. I think it's a risky venture for less than 10K too. 10K was just a figure I read, but not from Paypal's site.

Regards,
Neil

[baggyg]

Building a large steam library doesn't cost as much as you would think especially if you are wary of sales, bundles etc.

There is a steam calculator http://steamdb.info/calculator/ which works out how much a collection is worth. My collection (around 700 odd games) is apparently worth ~£7500. However it cost only a fraction of that by being patient and waiting for deals. I.e. Bioshock Infinite in the latest steam sale for around £6. The humble bundles really started a craze as well. I think I backed every single one, and also a lot of the groupee / indie bundles.

Anyways my point being that however a possible donation system is worked out, a little can go a long way.

[Rift_Astro]

Have the donate button on the client link to a web page on which you can present donation options. One perhaps launches to paypal. You administer the page to be whatever you want.

Get to $10k in the first account if you can and then set up a new bank and paypal account for the donate button to link to? If that can't be done just remove the link once you get to a level of funds that is sufficient to keep this going and replace with a big thank you. Even if you net a few thousand dollars only that will go a long way for a long time. I'd expect the $10k trolerance is per annum rather than a lifetime as well so be clear on what financial period you are working within to avoid complications with your tax law.

Alternatively sell pieces of paper with 'Thank You' printed on them on eBay for 10$ or 20$. I once sold 'Good Advice' on eBay for £5 at a time, sold about 30. It was a sheet of paper with "If you want to get rich don't buy novelty tat from eBay" written on it. Everyone gave good feedback which made me laugh. Anyway; they take their cut, you bank the money.

Bitcoins has been suggested.

I think the method of receiving money is less of a problem than the IRS (I assume you are an american group - I'm UK so don't know about your financial system too well) thinking you have an income that needs to be taxed. I'd bet there is a threshold at which you need to make some sort of declaration to them or register as a charity.

Whatever it takes to get this fantastic driver working for more titles can't be a bad thing and people will stump up the cash I'm sure. Once Oculus goes Consumer and VR itself goes mainstream your IP will be hot property. Anything we can do to get VR mainstream is a good thing I believe.

[anon84]

if that's a problem then you can sell a fictional item for 1cent each (or whatever the minimum allowed is), then let the user specify a quantity, which would then enable any donation amount

[Neil]

Hi Guys!

I may have found something: http://giftcardsy.com/steam-gift-card.html

I have never used these guys before, but this is how I think it would work.

1. Users would buy denominations of Steam Gift Cards, and email the codes to Vireio. We'll set up a special processing email. This isn't something you get in the mail; you actually get a gift card digital code emailed to you.
2. The codes get added to a central account for the purposes of Vireio Perception development.
3. Using Steam Wallet (which is what the funding goes into), we gift individual Vireio developers their games.

So the end result is:

1. We raise the money we need to raise for testing purposes.
2. We get the driver developers the games they actually need.
3. Users can effectively donate to and help support the Vireio cause.

The only caveat is the minimum contribution is $20, but I think that's very reasonable.

I think there are only a handful of people ready to put significant money in, so I think this is a reasonable energy VS reward mix.

What do you think?

Regards,
Neil

[Neil]

Sorry guys. This still doesn't look like the best solution because they charge a crazy $9 fee for sending a digital download key! Eugh!

Still looking for good solutions...will keep you posted!

Regards,
Neil

[anon84]

what's wrong with selling items using a paypal button. 1cent each unit? non charity

[dehe]

What about this one?

http://coinwidget.com/

[cybereality]

I'd check out the PayPal donate button:

https://www.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/?cmd= ... ro-outside

May be easier for people since I assume most have PayPal accounts.

Not sure how much the fees are, but I can't imagine it's a lot.

[baggyg]

I think the issue with the donation button is all the rules around non-profits.

Even if that wasn't the case a buy now button at multiple amounts ($2, $5, $10, $20) should work fine, I would have thought. There are currently situations where game support takes longer as all the devs don't have a copy of the game, and don't want to spend their own money to buy something they are not personally interested in. This sort of thing should help with that, and other things.

[Neil]

Hi Guys.

I'm looking into this. DrBeef is right about non-profits, etc. The Donate button isn't all it's cracked up to be. Valve added additional Steam Wallet features awhile ago; I just need to confirm it will meet our needs.

We are taking our first vacation right now in years, so I will look into this when I get back early next week. I'm sure we'll figure something out. All help appreciated!

Regards,
Neil