As a small artist, getting comments and support like this is so heartwarming and I literally cried. I say this as much as I can but when you like someone’s art leave a comment or send a message saying so. It can seriously make someone’s entire day.
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In the fall of 2018, Tapas began its internal currency known as “Ink,” taking the place of “coins.” Twice a year (in the spring and fall) they run a donation drive known as “Inksgiving” that encourages more people to gather and purchase Ink to give to their favorite creators. This raises money for both the platform and creators.
This is the tale of how I discovered they are taking out way more than they are telling people.
Recently on their forums, someone asked “How Many Ink is $1?”
The standard answer given was 1250 Ink = $1. Something about that didn’t add up for me.
That certainly is not the value when you purchase Ink:
Here, if you do not count the bonus Ink given, it only takes 800 Ink to reach $1. If you do count bonus Ink, only the “one time offer” and $50 levels come close to the 1250 figure, at 1200/$1.
Let’s break that down a bit:
It still wasn’t quite adding up to the 1250 people were quoting. So I started my own thread, trying to figure it out, which you can see here. There was a lot of discrepancy and general lack of answers.
A lot of users just kept insisting “it’s just the fees” and the different purchase values causing the discrepancies. Fees which are detailed accordingly:
There was also a lot of confusion over exactly when the fees were removed in the transaction. Especially when I pressed the staff member who was responding for precise details, since at that time I did not have any Ink based transactions to look at myself. He responded with this rather alarming tidbit:
In response to asking when exactly the fees were removed, “I think that’s based on your interpretation of the language.” Which is not something you want to hear.
At this point, I got tired of the “Well, if it’s an app purchase, then X...if it’s free Ink, then Y.....different countries mean different things....” you know, a whole slew of vague responses. So I took matters into my own hands and put my money into it.
I created a second account and made the purchase of 1600 Ink for $1.99 on the website. Then sent it to my primary account to test when and where the fees were removed and find out the value of Ink directly.
And the most curious thing happened.
It no longer became an issue of “when are the fees taken out.” Instead of losing 30% for the two different fees, it instead lost 52% from purchase to my share.
I broke down the process and the fees removed:
Another US based user repeated the same process with the exact same results. To which people kept saying it must be taxes. So a very helpful user based out of Sweden, where such transactions are taxed did the test for us as well:
Their tax was added to the purchasing prices, bringing it from $1.99 to $2.60. Which resulted in the same $1.33 being given to them. They used the app so their ending fees were even higher (shown here minus their local tax):
The last we heard on the matter was a response for Michael Son on November 8th, 1 week ago today:
There has been no follow up since. Nor has there been a reply to my email sent to Tapas on the 7th requesting clarification.
Up to 60% is being removed from these transactions and it’s not all that visible. One person never actually sees both sides, and the Support dashboard is laid out in such a way that you cannot easily see how much Ink correlates to USD in each different line.
Michael Son made several claims about how and where the Ink was purchased, the country of origin, the phase at which fees are taken out, etc. However, these precise numbers are repeatable by multiple users in different countries, across different formats.
There is no transparency at all into where the additional 33% has gone, or why it is occurring. Regardless of the cause, this is vastly higher than their stated fees. Plain and simple. It has been proven that users are made aware of any taxes they are charged.
If they will not change the way the system works, they should at least be held accountable for documenting what they are taking from users. If the transaction fees and their share is not high enough to cover additional fees, they should at least be honest about it.
To conclude, I extrapolated from the sources above what it would be worth at the different levels (assuming the “extra” ink counted) and how much would be lost at each level:
As of yet, no one has tested to find if this holds true and less is lost the more is purchased, or if the 33% holds true at all levels.
If you want to support the artists you enjoy, check to see if they have a Ko-Fi before using the Ink system. If you want to give just $2, they will get that just minus the paypal fee rather than losing more than half its value.
EDIT: There’s been developments
here and here respectively
Michael Son confirmed my numbers. Yoon made it more concerning. There are a lot of unanswered questions here, so I will let you draw your own conclusions. But dang, this is a mess.
