This is not the video that I wanted to make. Over the course of the last 6 months, I have shared more than 200 of Satisfactory Blueprints for free, and I see that some of my viewers are puzzled with something that is suddenly free. As you know, there are growing numbers of Satisfactory creators that are basically selling blueprints made in Satisfactory, while there are fancy terms like Paywalls of Patreon or YouTube membership support. Well, if you are exchanging something for money, and there is no other way around that, you are selling that something. Simple as that. This video is aimed to Satisfactory community, and to an extent to Satisfactory developers themselves. After I would make the point in this video, I hope to hear both the position of community, and to at least know the official stance of Coffee Stain Studios on such a matter. Alright, main reason behind putting something on Patreon or behind YouTube memberships is the support for a creator. Let's face it, making good videos is not cheap. Right now, I would go over expenses of running this YouTube channel over the course of the last year. In 2023, I got the new audio interface as an exchange for all broken one. Then, I got 4TB of high TWB SATA SSD storage to handle 4K video cache. My 2080 Ti GPU have died early 2023, and I was forced to replace it with 4070 only for the sake of 4K content creation. Also, to record voiceover, like right now, I do open my Murphy bed, I hang like 5 blankets in the middle of the room, I have one more blanket on the floor, I have some permanent fixtures on the back wall, and I already ordered more stuff, and this is all done to actually reduce amount of echo in the room, and I am in the process of removing this horror show and making something more permanent. Even with the local cheap materials, it still costs you quite a lot, and yeah, this is like a work in progress, and I probably will need more. So yeah, room echo and audio treatment, well, it's a challenge of its own. Also, there was one small guilty pleasure, I got myself ISS Roscosmos jumpsuit, and this was done to actually record KSP 2 videos, but well, that game is to be fair, nobody cares, so this is kinda useless. It is only the current hardware expenses for the year 2023. I do not count price of existing equipment like my PC, microphone, audio monitors, lights, cameras, stands, peripherals, software, etc etc etc. Then there is the matter of time investment, and well, majority of my videos are scripted, and they are heavily edited. Outside of making something in the game and coming up with the general idea itself, I do spend around 4-8 hours on writing a video script, then I spend around 3-6 hours to record voiceover, and then usually I spend at least several hours to capture B-roll footage in the game. I spend something about 2-4 hours to edit all the audio tracks into coherent narrative, this also includes removal of any breathing, gasps, lerps, snorts, pops and well, other unnecessary audio noise. Then I spend something about 8-20 hours to make an actual video editing with all the extra graphics, 2D animation, sound effects and audio balancing and normalization. And there is the publishing side of the videos with upload to YouTube, thumbnails, titles, custom subtitles, chapters, tags, well, a lot of extra stuff. The long story short, the longer 20 minute video can easily take up at least 40 hours in post-production. With other videos I can totally get away with only 20 hours of post-production, but well, it is as soon as I finish my idea in the game and I know what are my title and thumbnail. Usually, I do post one video per week, and like it or not, this is basically the full-time job if you are talking about that time investment. Just for the sake of an argument, we need to have the reference point in the form of the content creators that are selling satisfactory blueprints at the moment of publication of this video. This is not a personal attack or witch hunting, this is just an example with concrete faces. If you are talking about well-established content creators, there is total eclipse, and to cover smaller example of a creator we have key instruction. And once again, this is only an example of channels that are selling blueprints at the moment. There are way more channels of various sizes, it is just the channels that I personally know and enjoy. Total Eclipse features fully edited, most likely scripted videos, something quite similar to what I do on my channel. Key instruction, well, he features raw unscripted video footage with bare minimum amount of video editing. In any case, both production ways do not diminish achievements or ideas of both channels when it comes to satisfactory. We are talking about so-called production value and justification for selling satisfactory blueprints. So, how much ad revenue can get an average satisfactory video? Here is an example of my older unscripted video with minimal amount of video editing. Here you can see an actual revenue per 1000 total views, and that number is free USD. And yep, it is lower than the CPM that is being paid by advertisers, because this CPM number is multiplied by 55% that is revenue cut of content creator on YouTube, and in perfect way it would be like 7.6 USD per 1000 views. But since usually only like one third or maybe one fourth of views in satisfactory viewership based are monetized, it resulted in way less monetized views, even considering the fact that some people are actually sitting through the multiple ads. If you take well scripted, well edited video, we can see that beats for ad placement goes up, and average revenue of content creator also goes up, even though the video is only half in length. Not a drastic change, but still a huge motivation to make better well edited video. Especially if we consider that well edited 20 minute video is more likely to be recommended by YouTube than half-assed 40 minute slab of snorts and slurps. So, how much can satisfactory video make for content creator before taxes and bank fees? So, here is an example of video with 45k views. And here is an example of a flop with 10 time less in views. In both cases, we have the same amount of weak worth of full-time job applied to creation of the video. With medium sized channels like Total Eclipse, we can barely reach into the range where it is viable as an alternative to an entry-level full-time job. If we talk about smaller channels, hehe, well, you are hiding the weasel with YouTube big time. Nothing else to say about that. With those numbers, it is very natural to seek an alternative revenue sources like selling blueprints through Patreon or YouTube memberships. And here is the thing, when someone well known in satisfactory community like Total Eclipse start to sell blueprints, all of a sudden he basically greenlit everyone else selling satisfactory blueprints. And as a result, we can see starting out channels straight up selling blueprints whilst keeping the whole concept of high effort production. And well, well known creator part, screw that. If every other channel and content creator big or small assailing blueprints, why the hell anyone should even bother sharing their creation for free. You know, like, just slap some excuse of YouTube video, make the Patreon account and just charge for stuff, that's it. And I know, I know, maybe this is like a hot take, but this has already happened to a lot of games, even single player games. Only difference here is just the names of things. And well, let me explain on the examples of the other games. There is always underlying discussion about paid mods and assets in gaming community and reality is that mega corporations, they always try to milk console players and normal players and modders, just everyone, just for the sake of convenience of someone else. And reality is usually just will to control and milk passion of third party creators for a dime. There are still decent people out there, like Valheim developers who make their stand against paid mods for their games. And there is other things like commission mods, there are practice of early access patreon, but this doesn't matter. This is mods, this is different. Alright, there is a difference between something made solely in the game, like Six Factory Blueprints, and something that is done with use of third party software outside of the game, like mods. If we are talking about mods, we are talking about actually trading your software development skills. Sometimes it can break some yule and stuff, but for the most part, well, you are selling your expertise outside of the game. But when we are talking about selling something in the game, in the case of the online games, it's always RMC or real money trading by definition. And yeah, I just call satisfactory blueprint trading as equal to RMC and black markets of online games. Hot take for sure, but let me explain. As you can notice, I am fluent in Russian, because well, I was born in Soviet Union. So majority of my online games that I have done in the past was done through the lens of hardcore Russian gaming communities. When you go there, usually you are quite well connected to the black market, because well, those things are usually comes hand to hand, especially in Russia. I had close ties to black market resellers in even land around 2008. I still know quite a lot of people who sell legendaries in Guild Wars 2, and I was invited to participate in large scale Path of Exile black market operations, after I have revealed myself as a content creator that can make unique world first character builds for Path of Exile. And the last bit is really important. Path of Exile is technically an online game, but gameplay wise, well, it's just glorified single player game with optional multiplayer co-op. And also it have like centralized online market that leads to all the black market shenanigans, and there is the reason why all major Path of Exile creators do not play so called trade league with all the online elements. They usually play hardcore SSF, since this is an actual single player Path of Exile with zero black market influence. You see, once you have the knowledge, there is literally no reason to spend hours or even days farming Path of Exile currency in the trade league. You can just swipe like 10 US dollars on the black market and have only fun with zero farm for the rest of the league. Literally. Technically, you are not competing with anyone. You are not buying the advantage, you are just keeping the personal time via someone else's, well, world co-black market operation. Technically illegal? Yep. Immoral? Absolutely. But nobody cares. I had no actual black market resellers who were boasting about how grinding gear games will not ban them for years on the same account. Reality is that most of the time grinding gear games just turns the blind eye for the black market if it keeps more casual people engaged and, well, this is like a server online game. Now we are back to satisfactory blueprints. Is making blueprints is the part of the game? Yes. Do you skip all the time investment when you buy blueprint on the Patreon? Yes. Can you replace this blueprint with your own if you have an instruction? Yes. But so much so can be said about farming versus black market in Path of Exile. Once again, in both cases we have basically a single player game with nothing to compete about. You are just buying yourself a time saviour. But in one case we have technically illegal and immoral deeds, but in another case, for some unknown reason you are supporting a struggling content creator. And to be honest, in the past three decades of PC gaming I just stopped to see any difference. It always should be like an option if you want to save some time and cut corners. And to be fair, I do not care how many online elements your single player MMO actually have. It's all the same for me. It should not be a choice to swipe your cash to skip time, you know? Once you have decided to monetize your in-game creations either directly or through the black market, there is just no turning back. We are still quite far away from satisfactory one point or release. Or maybe it will release on February 30. I do not know. Majority of people are still missing out on an awesome feature of satisfactory blueprint designer. What will happen if every major and small satisfactory creator will just go and sell their factory blueprints? Well, if you can justify selling 10 or 20 hours of blueprint factory creation, why not to sell exterior designs and decorations? Why not to sell train intersections with built-in train signals? Why to teach new satisfactory players about using train signals when you can send them to your only propellers and sell your blueprints and videos there, you know? And once every single big creator actually doing that, well, everything else is technically non-existent on YouTube, because YouTube just like all the new and exciting flashy big things, everything else is just being buried because YouTube search just suck these days. Why even stop there? Why on earth blueprint sharing services like Satisfactory Calculator are free? You know, like just stuff on blueprint per day download limit and then charge for unlimited downloads, then why satisfactory factory planning software is even free? Just make it in the cloud and charge subscription fee for a cloud because, well, the cloud. Why on earth temporal illusion do not offer private satisfactory lessons on only propellers? So, I'm asking you satisfactory players, what are your thoughts on satisfactory blueprints being sold and not being free? And I'm asking you coffee stain studios, do you want to turn the blind eye to this gray area of your own game? Or maybe? Many coffee stain studios actually want to work to gather this community and at least provide community guidelines for such a gray areas like blueprint distribution rules. Also, I'm asking you satisfactory creators, do you want to sell something that basically any 12 year old can make or do you want to be supported by people who actually genuinely fond of you and want to support your creations on YouTube, your video editing and stuff, you know, like basic creator things. And well, if I cannot pledge for pure like egotistical and narcissistic reasons, I probably felt that they script and speaking of egotistical reasons, I am launching YouTube memberships. So, if you want to support my satisfactory madness of sharing blueprints for free, if you want also to support my totally overproduced satisfactory videos and if you want to well endure my hot takes about gaming industry like that, well, become a YouTube member. And while I'm writing this script, I do not even know is it even a joke or not. So, thank you very much for your opinion and support. Until the next time, check out my other videos and become a member. Yakez out.
