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Craft is for Creators

Craft is being built around the idea that people should be able to create, share, and play entirely new kinds of AI RPG experiences. To fully realize that vision and make the platform thrive, we need to ensure that creators are supported, respected, and rewarded for the work that they put into their projects. 

This post is an early first draft of how we’re thinking of supporting and rewarding creators through the Craft Creator Program. 

Nothing in this post is final yet. The numbers, mechanics, timelines, and policies are all illustrative and subject to change. We’re writing and sharing this early because we want to be transparent with the community, gather feedback, and show where we intend to take the platform over time.

Most of this likely will not be implemented or fully rolled out until after beta. Our first priority is making sure Craft works well for both players and creators. The platform needs to be stable, useful, and fun before monetization can become a major part of the experience.

That said, we want creators to know our intentions early: we believe creators should be able to earn from the value they create.

Monetization

At the core of the Craft Creator Program is giving creators the ability to enter into a partner program that allows them to turn on monetization for their worlds. 

To be eligible for monetization, projects will likely need to meet certain threshold requirements first. For example, a project may need to reach a minimum number of unique players, messages played, or other engagement milestones before it becomes eligible. Projects will also need to make sure that they meet other eligible requirements such as following community content guidelines and ensuring that the project content is original and does not infringe on any copyrights, trademarks, or intellectual property rights.

Once monetization is enabled, creators will be able to set a percentage Creator Reward Rate (CRR) for messages played in their project. For example, a creator could set a CRR of 2% and when a player sends messages inside a monetized project, the CRR would be applied on top of the normal message cost. All of the reward rate would accrue to the creator in a separate currency type, which for now we’ll tentatively label as Creator Points. 

Once a creator has Creator Points, they’ll be able to redeem them in a couple of different ways. The first option will be redeeming and converting Creator Points into Craft credits. Later on, we hope to support paying out Creator Points into USD, subject to eligibility, tax requirements, and regional availability.

Compliance and Administration

We want to be upfront that one of the main challenges of a program like this, is that enabling monetization introduces a lot of legal, tax, and administrative complexity.

For example, eligible creators will need to agree that their work is original and does not infringe on copyrights, trademarks, or other intellectual property rights. Projects based on copyrighted settings, protected characters, or other IP that the creator does not own or have permission to use will not be eligible for monetization. 

This also applies to game systems. Projects that use monetization will need to be based on original systems or system mechanics that creators have the legal right to use commercially. We will need to be careful here to avoid violating licensing agreements or allowing monetized content that creates legal risk for creators, players, or Craft.

Payment Cashouts

The Creator Program will likely roll out in phases. In the first phase, it’ll focus on earning Creator Points and being able to redeem them for Craft credits. 

Cashing out Creator Points for real money is more complicated because it involves payment processing, identity verification, tax reporting, and regional compliance. Because of that, cash payouts will likely come later in a second phase and begin with a smaller group of eligible creators, potentially starting with select U.S.-based creators before being able to expand more broadly into other regions. 

We know this part feels less exciting than the creative side, but it matters to ensure that a creator program based on monetization stays compliant and maintainable. 

Why use Creator Reward Rates?

At the heart of Craft is the principle of giving both players and creators choice.

We spent a lot of time thinking about the best long-term way to reward creators. While there are many possible approaches, we think a creator-controlled reward rate may be the best direction because it gives creators more control and makes earnings directly tied to player engagement.

Your earnings are uncapped. The more players engage with your content, the more you earn. There’s no ceiling and what you earn scales with the growth of the platform. We think that’s a far better model long-term than a flat amount handed out for placing on a leaderboard. 

Creators and players both keep full control. Creators can set their own percentage based on what feels right for their project. Because you can set it rather than us, you’re not locked into one platform-wide rate — you can go higher if you think your project warrants it. And players keep their side of the choice too: they can decide which projects to play, from no to low-fee projects to premium-feeling experiences that may have higher creator reward rates. 

Small percentages add up. Our expectation is that most creators will keep these percentages fairly small. Creators still want players to play, explore, and spend time in their worlds. A small rate is essentially unnoticeable to an individual player, but across hundreds of players and thousands of messages, will accrue into a meaningful amount for creators. 

We also want to keep Craft’s base cost of play as low as possible. 

Rather than raising costs across the whole platform to fund creator monetization, the Creator Reward Rate is only added when a player chooses to play a monetized world. This keeps non-monetized projects at the same cost, while giving creators a direct way to earn from the value they create.

It also gives creators more control, since they can choose a rate that makes sense for their own project instead of being limited to one fixed reward rate set by Craft.

Tipping Credits

In addition to being able to monetize and earn from project engagement, we also want to give players a direct way to support their favourite creators. We’re planning to introduce a way to tip credits, allowing anyone to visit someone’s profile and send them a flat credit-based tip, optionally with a message of support. 

This is meant to be simple and direct. Sometimes a player may love a world, appreciate a creator’s work, or want to send a quick thank you and some support for helping the creator build out their projects further. 

Creator Analytics

We'll be building out more metrics and tooling so creators can actually have insights into how their projects are performing. Think things like how long people are playing your projects, which game starts they’re choosing, how engagement varies across those different starts, and how changes to a project affect play over time. 

The goal is to help creators improve their projects, understand their audiences, and make better decisions about what to create next.

Final Thoughts

This is the current first draft of how we are thinking about the Craft Creator Program.

To be clear: this is not a final announcement of a finished system. Everything here is subject to change. There are still many things that need to be prioritized during beta before a creator monetization program can be fully rolled out. But this is the direction we want to move in.

We believe creators should be rewarded for the value they bring to players. We believe great worlds, systems, stories, and experiences should be rewarded for their work. And we believe the best version of Craft is one where players and creators both have meaningful choice. 

We’re sharing this early because we want to be transparent and gather feedback. Let us know in the Discord what you think and if there’s anything we may have missed. 

Thank you for building with us.