Patreon took a serious misstep with their new service fee system and the Patreon community let them know it. Forums and social media erupted in backlash over a policy that most said would break the platform at its core. 

“We messed up. We’re sorry.” That’s how Patreon CEO Jack Conte started an apology letter to his community. The core message behind that letter was this; Patreon’s new fees – the ones that would seriously impact patrons donating $1 and $5 and that resulted in a small exodus of users – would no longer be implemented.  

The news itself is fantastic, but what’s even more impressive is the way the entire situation unfolded. Patreon announced the fees and a small but powerful uproar commenced. That led to Patreon and Conte doubling down on the fees policy, insisting that it was for the benefit of the content creators. 

It’s hard to admit that you were wrong in any situation, but to eloquently admit that you were wrong after having repetitively insisted that you were right, that’s nothing short of impressive.

Jack Conte proved that he and his company do sincerely have the best interest of their customers at heart. Nowhere is that more apparent than in the last sentence of his apology, “We are nothing without you, and we know that.”

Of course, the underlying problem that this new policy aimed to fix is still present. Conte admits that changes will still have to be made, but says “we’re going to fix them in a different way, and we’re going to work with you to come up with the specifics, as we should have done the first time around.”

There is a glaring lesson to be learned in all of this and EA, Bungie and others would do well to take notes.

It’s okay to be wrong. It’s okay to make mistakes, even colossal ones. Perfection is boring and suspicious. The important thing is to learn from your mistakes and to learn from those who are willing to help.

People are forgiving. Not all of them, but most of them. If EA fixed everything wrong with Battlefront II tomorrow and sincerely admitted that they royally screwed up, the majority of the community would forgive them and flock to the game.

Patreon created a blueprint for how to recover from a massive mistake. Now we just need to hope that they stay on the right course, and that other companies can follow in their footsteps.