I personally really love the patron model (e.g. Patreon) where people who have the money and care about something can promote it for all of humanity.
As a (relatively) poor kid I pirated a lot because I didn't have a good alternative. But now that I'm better off, I'm really happy to pay and support content creators while allowing others who are not as lucky as me to get it for free.
Patreon has been getting worse over time as people have explored what it is capable of (both on the corporate and user side).
At first, it was just a recurring paypal where subscription got you access to a private forum.
Then creators started putting development materials and bloopers on it.
Then extras and previews.
Now a lot of patreons are just turning into paysites. All the content is on patreon, all of it behind tiered paywalls. Its no different than technology we had in abundance in 2004.
The difference is that with paysites the owners of the site handled the payment processor. Now those creators have forfeited their autonomy for the (probably worthwhile as web centralization has shown) increased exposure and convenience of being on THE recurring payments site. Now one corporate entity can arbitrarily kill someones business on their own whims while taking a cut of all their fans contributions.
I personally really love the patron model (e.g. Patreon) where people who have the money and care about something can promote it for all of humanity.
As a (relatively) poor kid I pirated a lot because I didn't have a good alternative. But now that I'm better off, I'm really happy to pay and support content creators while allowing others who are not as lucky as me to get it for free.