It’s been around 18 months now since we relaunched our Patreon as the Digital Foundry Supporter Program – and I wanted to take the opportunity to tell you what we’ve achieved in that time and where we aim to go next with the aid of your backing. For us at DF, it’s been an interesting and successful experience based on a fundamental question: in a world packed with free reporting, can we actually sustain and grow what we do with help from the audience? And what if we invited these supporters to be closer to the team, to talk to us directly, and to offer a range of further benefits in the process?
Let’s quickly talk about the basics of what we offer. The DF Supporter Program has three tiers: the $5/£5 supporter tier gives you access to our Discord – where the team regularly participate in discussions and answer questions – along with early access to DF Direct Weekly, the ability to pose questions for the show along with a weekly update from me that keeps backers fully up to speed with what projects each staff member is working on and what else is in the pipeline. High quality, ad-free video downloads? Yes, that’s included too.
Speaking of downloads, we’ve upgraded our satellite website, digitalfoundry.net, to better service supporters, with easy access to our work. Everything we do is available for users to easily download in both h.264 and HEVC formats, with the format of the site changing according to your Patreon tier, allowing you to easily access exclusive material depending on the support level you’ve chosen.
