Proposed licensing model

Personally I would really like to simply have a pricetag on Construct 2, with a certain healthy set of features.

The problem is this is effectively the "perpetual infinite" license, since our development model only introduces 'minor' updates for the forseeable future.

Because of that, I think we have to stick to some kind of x-per-year. I think a 10 year license is long enough that you don't need to think about it.

I'll rewrite the proposed model and post it again with a new poll in a couple of days (I realise this thread is only a few hours old )

My two cents:

Whatever will come in future, be careful with drastic changes to the licensing.

The biggest influence on the interest in C1 was (and is) that it is free. You want to make sure, there is money to pay the rent - but there is no guarantees. I'm not sure I can explain my thoughts well enough in english, but I will try. You can either think of a number of people, that you hope will pay for something, then decide, how much money you want to make out of this number and hope for the best. But most of the time, you can not rely on any number of possible clients...

From the customer side, I'm not a big fan of any kind of yearly subscriptions. A model that forces me to buy a time-limited license if I expect to make some money with a game, complicates things. I'm not a professional company, I'm just one person. The project may be done after two years, but it could also need three or four years to complete - I would then need to buy another license without having the results I expected when buying the first one. Wasted money.

"�40 for 2 years"

I personally don't mind paying up to $100 for C2, however, I absolutely LOATHE the idea of a 2 year license thing. Licensing systems like that is what keep me away from a lot of commercial engines today. I like to OWN what I purchase.

Please, please PLEASE do not go through with that.

How do you propose we issue licenses otherwise? If you pay a one-off for C2, does that mean you get free upgrades for ever and ever? Right now I have zero plans to ever create a "Construct 3". We're going to be incrementally upgrading, and producing new exporters, for the forseeable long-term future.

You do own the software once it's licensed and the no-DRM thing is directly aimed at allowing you to do what you like with the software (e.g. install to thumb drive, no phoning home). Once the license expires there'll be a notification which you can dismiss.

Is it so bad?

The problem with a flat fee is the incremental small updates. Construct isn't going to be "Construct 3" or "Construct 4" every year like Photoshop or similar. There needs to be a "subscription" of some sort. The problem with the proposed model is the limitations on publishing rights if I choose to stop upgrading. This would be like Adobe disabling my Photoshop CS2 because it's old. That sucks and wouldn't ever by any program like this, especially an indie one.

Make Construct 2 a one time purchase and charge for the incremental upgrades. I buy Construct once, I pay for upgrade periods. Something like this feels most logical and most enticing, while not making things complicated. For example:

Store Products:

1. Construct 2 + 2 years free Incremental Upgrades: $4X

---Includes the most recent edition of Construct 2, the ability to export to A, B, C systems, and free regular upgrades to Construct 2/exporters for the duration of two years.

2. +2 years Incremental Upgrades: $2X

---Add two additional years of Construct 2 upgrades to ensure uninterrupted updates of the newest Construct 2 features

3. Additional First-Party Exporters: $1X

---Broaden your user base by exporting to more systems.

4. Commercial License: $15X

---Ready to mass market your game? Buy the Construct 2 commercial license when your game sales are $2,000X or more.

Future Store Products:

1. Construct 2 to 3 Upgrade: $2X

---Ready to take your game making experience to the next level? Already own Construct 2? Save 50% on Construct 3 by upgrading. The remainder of your free incremental upgrades period on Construct 2 will be transferred and you will receive addition year of incremental Upgrades for Construct 3 free

2. Additional First-Party Exporter Upgrade:

---Already own several Construct 2 exporters? Upgrade them to their Construct 3 versions and receive a 50% discount.

If you imagine X being ~$10, this would seem very reasonable to me, while still allowing the dev's to profit. Publishing rights would always be available, even after Incremental Upgrade periods were finished. People could make unofficial exporters still, while dev's could make a little money on first -party exporters if they wished.

Once the license expires there'll be a notification which you can dismiss.

no phoning home

Huh? How else should Construct find out that you have a valid license? If you think that the license should be offline, then the pirates will sooner or later find out how to crack this.

Disabling the software when your license ends was never on the cards - and you can continue selling something you made with it after your license expires - the license is to use the software.

I think what several people have now said is right: the best model is you buy the software and 2 years of updates. You can continue using it after your license expires, it's yours and you bought it and it won't nag you. However, you can't get the latest updates after 2 years (if you ignore this and upgrade anyway it switches back to demo-nag mode).

I don't like the idea of paying for exporters separately. It faces the same "infinite forever license" problem. They may as well be thrown in free with the editor. It also reduces the perception that you're being charged over and over again for each feature you want to use.

I'll rewrite the proposal soon along these lines as I said before, just will give things a bit of time to cool off.

I repeat what i said few times already. It's all cool what you coming up with Ash. However maybe the way Minecraft was and is distributed would satysfy everyone on this forum? When in alpha MC costed 6.99 euro with indication that final version will cost 19.99 plus whoever buys alpha will be getting updates and addons fo free trough the lifetime. MC is in beta now and it cost, i think, 12.99 and there is indication that updates r for free till version 1.0, and after that fixes will be only free and for addons you will have to pay extra. And maybe this would work for C2? There is still houndreds thousends of people who never even heard of construct, so there is still massive market ahead. What do you think?

edit@ sorry i don't think i was clear enough. Basicly C2 alpha should be sold for one of payment with lifetime updates, but after that the two year subscription would kick for evey new purchase when in beta.

edit2@ god , my english might be a bit terrible today ^^'

I don't think we should issue lifetime licenses with our incremental version model, but I like the idea of an alpha/early-adopter license. It could help us raise funds for development, if we start issuing them soon. How about a �9.99 "early adopter" license which has 2 years of upgrades, with a view to increasing it to �39.99 as we add more features?

I understand why you want to do that. You spent [I don't know how many] years on this project.

Before switching to Construct I tried to crack MMF2, what made me use Construct was what is written on this forum banner "home of Construct, the free open-source game creator".

It won't be Construct anymore.

Why is Construct more and more popular ? Because it is "the free open-source game creator".

Clickteam (more than 15 years old) is a very small company (2 or 3 people), just like Scirra. Check their forum. Check yours.

If people needed to pay a license for Construct you would lost 60% of them, 35% would crack Construct (DRM free !!! World Of Goo, awesome independant game, DRM free, 9/10 copies are illegal), how much would you earn ? How much would you lose ?

Let's open our eyes, there are not millions of users, unfortunately. For now it is like commiting suicide, despite HTML 5 export feature. Why not wait for Construct 3, 4, ... ?

I don't think we should issue lifetime licenses with our incremental version model, but I like the idea of an alpha/early-adopter license. It could help us raise funds for development, if we start issuing them soon. How about a ?9.99 "early adopter" license which has 2 years of upgrades, with a view to increasing it to ?39.99 as we add more features?

It's cool, althought maybe you could add an extra year or two to the early version as won't it take some time, like a year or so, before it will be useful enough to make proper games?

Thank for the clarification Ashley. Not sure where I got my "Can't make games after license expires" idea from. All exporters free sounds great, as well I might be on a small list of people how wouldn't mind spending a little bit of money on them.

By the way, I finally got to downloading C2... it's 100x times better than I expected in my weeks of reading about it. Keep up the great work!

Well, I like your proposals, and I have no problem with any of them.

If you're a hobby programmer then �40 for 2 years is going to be well worth it, and if you're more serious about it, then both �40 and �150 for 2 years is still good value.

The only reason Construct 2 is still a No from me is the absence of a Windows exe exporter.

If it has a fully-featured exe exporter bundled with it upon release, then I'd have no problem paying either price.

If there isn't an official exe exporter created at some point down the line (i.e. free for those who have already paid), then I would be giving Construct 2 a miss.

And the possibility of an official exe exporter being released at a later date would not be enough for me to buy in advance of that.

So, in short, a very good license idea in my opinion, but the missing exe exporter is a deal-breaker for me.

Good luck with it anyway.

EDIT: I haven't read the whole thread, but what about upgrading from one license to another?

Is it just going to be a case of paying the difference (�110)?

Krush.

I would gladly pay, but tying things to a yearly/bi-yearly deal is always a gamble, because should the project end at some point (and it can happen to any project), the end user is left having paid for something he can no longer get the agreed upon updates for.

Here is my thought:

Construct 2 Free - Fully functional but with splash screens and no exporters can be used except for .exe's, no special plug-ins, no updates. Barebones.

Construct 2 Silver - Fully functional, no splash screens. Only .exe's can be exported, only a few essential special plug-ins, updates must be paid for.

Construct 2 Gold Pro - Fully functional, no splash screens, .exe exporter, more essential plug-ins, choice of one major exporter (xna, iphone, etc.), all updates included for the life of the product.

Construct 2 Platinum Pro - Fully functional, no splash screens, all plug-ins, all exporters, all updates for the life of the product.

Construct 2 Custom - Customization is big, and this one would allow us to customize exactly what we want thus determining the final price the we would pay. The minimum would be above Silver, but lower than Gold Pro and Platinum Pro, and as we add things one-by-one we would be able to see the price climb in real-time.

Notice I used the words "life of the product". In order to move developers forward into the future and be able to offer totally new versions of Construct to justify a new purchase, you'd at some point end production and updating on Construct 2 Free, Silver, Gold, and Platinum, and begin a new cycle with Construct 3 Free, Silver, Gold and Platinum... and then 4 and 5 and so on, much in the same way that console dev kits are handled from one generation to the next (i.e. development of new tools and updates on those kits cease, and developers have to pay to move over to the new kit).

The model you proposed is a bad one. No new comer will buy C2. It is in it alpha stage right now, you really have no great games to show off the product. It is prone to having bugs with each new up date. I think you should go the Video Ad revenue route along with the closed exporter.

First of all C2 user should have to assign the program to their users account.

So you know if people have payed for the experter or not.

One C2 pogram installed on one pc per user.

For non paying users there should be no exporters at all instead,

Non paying users can could post there games on Scirra gaming site.

This would be like a youtube for games site.

You could put video ads commercial to play before the game start like the videos in youtube.

you could put up html5 code so people link up the game to their web site, or share links to social site like face book, twitter,etc just like youtube dose.

So as people play the game and rate them, you could make best of game page.

Then you could create construct 2 gaming app for google chrome app store where the best games will be featured.

By doing all this you will get more people interested in C2. The people who make game and the people who play then.

If let users decide that their are willing to pay for the exporters (individual ones, or bundle packs) They would have to do it under their user account.

This was you could make money while C2 is in development and when it is out of development.

Edit: ash I really want to know what you think of this idea.