An Update on Transcripts (Patreon)

Hey Patrons,

We’d just like to give you all an update on the transcripts situation for all our in-house productions.

We’ve already allocated major resources and are working with some professional transcription companies to start getting all existing and future shows sorted in the next few months including Stellar Firma, Rusty Quill Gaming and The Magnus Archives.

We’re sorry this has taken so long. Over the last 18 months, we have had several false starts and dead ends as we explored various solutions, none of which panned out in a way were comfortable with and as a result our messaging around this issue has been inconsistent.

To briefly explain, our backlog has proven far more expensive and labour intensive than we originally anticipated. This meant we could not afford a full professional transcription service for all shows until recently and even then, we have found that work from the best professional companies will still require considerable additional internal work if we want to prepare them in a format familiar to those of you who have read our existing transcripts.

To be clear, we have already trialled numerous methods used by industry peers, but unfortunately we have found them to be inconsistent in quality, unsustainable at our larger scale, or making extensive use of free labour.

All that said, we are pleased to say that we are now at the QA stage with a reputable professional provider, we’re checking samples meet our internal accuracy/accessibility standards and we’re calculating the timescales needed to address our entire backlog a.s.a.p. We have already committed the significant funds to commission our entire back catalogue and have restructured our internal processes to accommodate a new system and are building a whole new website to better facilitate accessible transcripts for all shows at point of release going forward. We hope that all these changes working in concert together should place us in a strong position on transcripts going forwards but obviously it’s too early for us to be certain on all points.

We’ll update everyone on any major developments going forwards and as soon as we are confident we have a permanent, sustainable and ethical solution in place that will meet our standards, we will proceed publicly. Until then we’d like to thank everyone for your ongoing patience as we work through this complicated process.