Since August of last year, @Aleos and I have been discussing the feasibility of bringing this system back to life. Once upon a time it allowed rAthena to flourish, encouraging members to create amazing scripts and designs as there was a great motivator involved; money. Being able to sell files on rAthena was good motivation for members, and with the rAT (rAthena Tax Value of 20%) it meant that rAthena itself was able to cover costs without dipping into the staff's pockets to cover shortfall.
Unfortunately this feature took abit of a nose-dive due to Admin inactivity and chargebacks.
Inactivity meant that members who were selling their files didn't get their payout request completed in a timely manner.
With the rA PayPal account being registered in a different country to myself, I couldn't provision many requests without paypal locking me out.
Chargebacks meant PayPal was reversing the transaction and charging us for the privilege of having less money.
After many months of planning, we believe we have ironed out the kinks and have placed contingencies to prevent another nose-dive.
To begin with, some of the rAthena Staff have been busy creating designs, scripts, source edits, etc to upload to a special user on the system. They will be appearing on an "as and when" basis continually over the next few months.
The @Files user is a system bot and will be the account responsible for selling files. Staff are all aware that adding a file to the system under this user negates "commission" that they would normally earn when uploading as themselves. The funds go directly to rA's PayPal account to accrue or be used for general rAthena outgoings.
If there are no major hitches, we will consider re-opening the system for members to submit their files for sale under their own account in order to earn themselves commission.
Current outstanding payout requests have all been cancelled and need to be resubmitted. The requests and user credit was transferred during the upgrade from IPB3 to IPS4, but the payout method has changed slightly, so they need to be resubmitted for the system to handle them correctly. You can find this page under main navigation My Account -> Account Credit. Payouts can also be authorised by the Content Moderators - this time round there will be no need for members to wait for me to be online.
Please also note, when being moved to the PayPal page you will no longer see "rAthena" at the top. Instead you will see "Industrial-Illusions". The paypal email for rAthena hasn't changed.
As of last week, rAthena is officially a registered not-for-profit legal entity. We have an accountant and everything! The devs can now put rAthena on their Résumé and use each other as Professional References. Neat huh?
The Staff have been preparing for this for many months and are happy to answer any questions you might have regarding the IP.Commerce App. We would be grateful for constructive feedback too!