Regarding Ads

[d1g1t]

• I don't want to see ads
  Use an adblocker
• Will I be banned if I use an adblocker?
  No.
• Am I a bad person if I use an adblocker?
  No. You may use an adblocker without any guilt.
• But the skip pokemon button disappears in battle!
  It's one extra click. You'll have to pick whatever you find less annoying.
• Why can't I have both?
  You can if you make a pledge on our Patreon
• I don't have any money. I want the game for free and without ads and without the skip button being disabled.
  This is one of the patreon goals, where ads will be disabled for everyone if and when once we reach a certain amount each month.
  * Patreon has since disabled this feature. But this goal appears to not really be feasible for us based on the subscription rate so far.
• Buuuut, I want that nowwwwww!!!
  Sadly, we can't have everything we want.
• I already pay my internet company!
  And they don't help us pay for the servers.
• But facebook is free!
  And we do not collect any personal information or sell them, and we never intend to.
• There are thousands of people online! You must be making billions in ads!!
  Yet, we often struggle to keep up with server costs.
• This is just a scam to get us to pay on Patreon.
  You don't have to join our Patreon.
• I not able to pay with my local currency.
  Your payment provider will automatically do the currency conversion.
• I mean a couple of dollars is too much in my local currency.
  It's okay. You don't have to join Patreon.
• I would like to pay using my local payment method that Patreon does not support.
  Patreon helps create something sustainable that can match our costs each month, and not for just one month, all in one place. I do not wish to spend my time juggling multiple platforms worrying about how each transaction is taxed.
  And it's okay if you don't help with the costs.
• I'm sorry, I can't afford it.
  That's completely alright. You don't need to feel bad about that.
• Is Deluge going to shut down because of the costs?
  Not in the near future. We will downgrade to smaller and slower servers making the game run slower. We may even disable certain features from the site to help.
• I can't pay. How else can I help?
  By not hoarding pokemon. Release stuff you don't need. Tell your friends about the game if you think they might be interested. And just be nice to people.
• Can't we just have fewer ads?
  Probably not. Fact of the matter is that advertisers tend not to pay much for traffic from not-so-rich countries, but that is where a majority of our user base is.
• But it wasn't this bad 10 years ago!
  I agree. We were doing fine with a couple of plain banner ads for a long time since the game started. But the internet changed a lot in those years. Advertisers started preferring addictive spaces such as social media, ads started paying less, our expenses started going up and we had to desperately start the Patreon page to keep the site alive, despite having a similar sized user base. I don't like having to defend annoying ads, but here we are.