What payment option would you like to see for Construct 3?

It's a done deal. Discuss it all you want, but let's stop trying to drag Ashley and Tom into the discussion in an attempt to convince them. You are not going to convince them at this point and you are only distracting them from work they can be doing to improve C3 and fixing bugs in C2. They are already well aware that most of us don't want to pay for subscriptions. Only numbers matter now. Nothing really else we can do.

In regards to locking users out of there product, it's not really a benefit to be able to extract art and sounds from a C3 game, because most of the final art would most likely be on our hard drives anyway. C3 is only really good for basic art and placeholders. And if anyone ever exported out their HTML5 game, all the assets are right there. So I see the point people are making. That being said, Ashley said he is looking into a way to allow users to update and bug fix their games after their subscription is over. So why are people still arguing about this? Let's wait to see his solution.

He deserved to be banned, and is never welcome back. You didn't see a lot of personally targeted emails, threats and general revolting behaviour we will not ever tolerate.

We are not banning people who voice their opinions, and I have no idea where you got that impression from.

I agree that Lamar should have been banned. He once threatened me in a PM because I didn't agree with him about something. I know of a couple of other people he threatened too. Since being banned, he's been creating fake accounts on a nearly daily basis and trolling this forum. If there was anyone deserving of a ban, it's Lamar. There are other forums better fitting for him, like 4Chan or Newgrounds.

And in regards to the thread locking, I saw this trend and brought this issue up many times before. No one seemed to care back then. People only care when it happens to them. I just accepted it because in the end, it's not my forum. It's Tom's and Ashley's forum. They decide the rules and we are required to play by them, or find a better place.

Ashley

I think you need a completely separate message board for C3. You will continue to have these problems from people who won't subscribe and hate not speaking up about it for the foreseeable future. It's not like the Flash users who eventually went away to find something else. A lot of these people are C2 users and many of them are not going anywhere for as long as they use C2. Separate the happy C2 users from the happy C3 users. Die hard C2 users would have no reason to go to the C3 message board unless they were open to using C3, but even if they did, they probably wouldn't have the same amount of support there because it'll mostly be C3 users.

Just a thought.

This topic as a whole has run its course. When C3 subscriptions become available, either sign up for the first year or don't.

There are many complaints about Construct being a hobbyist tool. Their solution is to have subscriptions so they can pay their workers and add more features.

Makes sense and if it doesn't work then I'm sure they'll change the model. But til then, there's c2 and other engines.

I've decided to support and hope that this year shows that they're adding the features we want/need.

Others will follow suit and others won't. I do understand the desire to fight against the decision but it is what it is.

Like Ashley have said it in another thread, everything is already said about those subjects of the subscription model.

You like the new model and pay the subscription or you do not like the new model and look for another option, C2 or another game engine.

The choice is yours and yours alone.

I made the choice already when the public beta became available. I will buy a subscription and make it work.

I like what I see in Construct 3 and believe the future shines bright!

I hope our small daughter is interested to participate together with me in the game jam. Should be very nice teaming up with her. I am sure our small game will not be a winner but we will learn a lot about construct 3.

Chris

Well they have been locking threads with the same subject , trying to avoid bad publicity pretty much.

But once a thread like this one is removed, someone creates another one where it starts over again.

People from this community need it, in order to vent their feelings and cope with the changes that Ashley and co are applying.

When threads here get locked, what then happens is people go to other game engine forums and start discussing how crap scirra has become there and go in deep conversations about different subscription models. There they dont have to moderate what they say, because they are not afraid of getting banned.

That then creates more bad publicity for scirra.

But publicity is publicity - good or bad - that has for example made some people on the clickteam forum give construct3 a try and like it - regardless of the bad rep.

I don't think that the situation is handled very well by scirra. Some very very valuable contributors to the community have been outright banned!

I am talking about X3M , who made the babylon3d plugin:

His plugin was removed from the store.

It says that X3M is a banned user. Is this true? Also I don't see Babylon 3d on the store anymore.

Can please Tom clarify what happened there?

Putting aside alienating most users with the new rent license, the senseless way it was announced, the locking of threads and banning of users - you also have spam bots hacking the forum constantly. How are we to see you as a reliable company to pay subscription to?

Imagine the same crap happening to construct3 as a service - people who paid a yearly license will flip out. Something must be done for these hacks and spam bots!

C3 have many things need to discuss beside its price.

I don't know why you guys keep complain about price?

What if they have 2 options :

1 - You guys can buyout c3, 1 times payment, and never get any update(some errors fix, but not new features)

Next year, they release C4 and sale again, and .. C5,C6.....

2- Pay subscription and get update frequently, new feature release every week, month....

Which one do you prefer?

If you guys don't need new feature, you can stay with C2, it good so far.

Thank Construct team.

C3 have many things need to discuss beside its price.

I don't know why you guys keep complain about price?

What if they have 2 options :

1 - You guys can buyout c3, 1 times payment, and never get any update(some errors fix, but not new features)

Next year, they release C4 and sale again, and .. C5,C6.....

2- Pay subscription and get update frequently, new feature release every week, month....

Which one do you prefer?

If you guys don't need new feature, you can stay with C2, it good so far.

Thank Construct team.

Some of us constantly argue the same - that the price is not the problem - but the renting nature of the license and the lockouts are. Calling it a subscription is a little bit misleading, because there are many subscription models that subscribe you to updates but dont lock you out of the main editing features of the software.

Ashley goes in circles back to the price- leading away from that topic of the licensing style and back to the topic of scirra needing more money to add features. When we mention the lockout being a problem, he argues with "...but you are not being locked out of your imported game assets (graphics)" .

Duh, we already have these assets on our computers without the drm bs - so what good is that? Locking users out of the game logic after a year passes - the event sheet is the engine. It's everything

Thats the deal breaker

tbh the payment style can be anything if that stuff wasnt there - pay monthly for updates, or pay on a yearly basis - whatever scirra likes. Just remove the enforcing of lockouts

[quote:1ftke7us]There they dont have to moderate what they say, because they are not afraid of getting banned.

Stop mischaracterising us as a company who go around banning people who we disagree with. This is patently false. Guess what, if you send abusive and threatening emails to staff members on an individual basis you will be banned.

Looking at our ban list for the past month, every ban has been either:

• An abusive user who keeps attempting to circumvent the ban
• Spammers
• A single account that was hacked for their own protection (when the user makes contact we can re-open the account)

It's very frustrating to keep addressing this as your insinuation is flat out wrong.

[quote:1ftke7us]Can please Tom clarify what happened there?

Yes, look at his profile he was hacked. The hacker who hijacked his account also attempted to hack our store which caused problems for our sellers (now resolved). The store hack damage was limited to items being taken off sale for a period of 1 or 2 days. No other damage was done as other safeguards worked fine.

[quote:1ftke7us]Putting aside alienating most users with the new rent license, the senseless way it was announced, the locking of threads and banning of users - you also have spam bots hacking the forum constantly. How are we to see you as a reliable company to pay subscription to?

Imagine the same crap happening to construct3 as a service - people who paid a yearly license will flip out. Something must be done for these hacks and spam bots!

I have absolutely no idea what you are talking about here. What hacks and spam are you specifically worried about in affecting your license of Construct 3? Please be specific and I will address each point. To pre-empt some of your responses:

• We're on a completely new environment, separate from the Scirra domain (this site was built years ago when we were a fresh startup and needed to get it out the door ASAP - it's a victim of it's own success and now needs a re-write)
• We have Rackspace on contract monitoring and maintaining our new deployment
• We are deployed on Azure cloud which will scale with our users

I don't know why you guys keep complain about price?

It's not the price, it's the model. Lot's have people have even said they are willing to pay more!

I think most of us have accepted that subscriptions are going to happen, and understand the reasoning from Scirra's point of view and the benefits it will bring to all users, but the rental model Scirra are going for only really works IF you are a full time developer and don't mind not owning the software.

I'm sure this model will be somewhat successful from Scirra's perspective because there are a lot of people who fall into that category, so Scirra will still make a lot of money, but as the response on the forums show, there are many more who don't fall into that category.

There are a couple of simple additions that Scirra could make that I believe would alleviate a lot of the concerns raised about the model, getting more people to adopt C3, making Scirra even more money.

Suspend Subscription: allow users to temporarily suspend their subscription, maybe limited to 4 times per subscription period so it's not abused, so those who don't use C3 for months at a time won't feel like they've wasted the subscription.

Lifetime Subscription: allow users to pay once to use C3 for the lifetime of the software, this could be equivalent to paying 3 to 5 years subscription upfront , and coupled with the stand-alone version will give users a sense of ownership of the software.

As to the "editing lockout" issue, Scirra have partially addressed this by saying they are looking into allowing users to do some edits and re-export previously exported projects, which is fine as far as it goes, but I would like to propose another solution.

Limited Standalone Version: for users whose subscription has lapsed (i.e. only those who have already paid something), allow them to use the standalone version to edit their projects, but make it so it can't be updated or use any export method that requires only services, that way these users incur no ongoing costs for Scirra, and when they are ready, they can re-subscribe to get updates and export.

This might cause a delay in re-subscribing for some users, which might concern Scirra, but it's better to have a delay than to drive people away by the prospect of being locked out of editing their projects.

Ashley and Tom are listening, if not necessarily taking action on our suggestions, but hopefully they know that we are only this vocal because we like C2 and the improvements C3 will bring, and we want Scirra to be successful, we just fear they are driving too many of their existing customer base away.

blurymind

While I agree with you that Scirra's rental model for C3 is not the best, I think you are way off base with regards to them locking threads and banning people.

Well they have been locking threads with the same subject , trying to avoid bad publicity pretty much.

Except a lot of those threads were open for weeks and had more than 100 posts before they were locked (not deleted or hidden).

If they really didn't want them on the forum, they could have deleted them much earlier and they wouldn't even be there for you to link to now.

Quite a few of the ones you linked are still open, so they are definitely not locking all threads either.

I don't think that the situation is handled very well by scirra. Some very very valuable contributors to the community have been outright banned!

Apart from X3M, who turns out was hacked, which valuable contributors have been banned?

I know lamar had previously been actively contributing to the community, but he seemed to go bat-crap crazy and definitely deserved his ban from what he posted on the forums, never mind what he posted elsewhere and sent to Scirra.

I am sorry,

I was not initially aware of X3M's account being hacked and lamar 's behavior

Regardless of how long these threads lasted, they were eventually getting locked, as obviously they started to become toxic. But that stuff is all bad publicity too. When you go to the forum of an engine you just discovered, and the thread with most posts and activity is the one about a serious issue with it - that paints your first impression negatively

The spambots have been poluting this forum for ages now and having X3M 's account hacked and product removed makes it look like security here is not handled well - directly affecting a vendor and a product on the store (I bought his product btw).

Tom I understand your frustration with my criticism, but when a forum security issue starts to affect items on your store, then it is normal for me to assume that things like this could happen to a paid online service that you will be providing (c3)

Hopefully that would never happen, but I hope that security measures will be taken to protect paying construct3 users from:

1. accounts being hacked/stolen/disabled

2. projects being stolen/damaged

How integrated is the forum account with the account for using the engine?

Does construct3 prompt for dropbox password prior to getting access to the hosted project?

Can a hacker who gained access to an account retrieve other sensitive data from the victim?

Retrieving a stolen account - account protection - what measures are there?

Will the EULA of construct3 free you from any responsibility if the victim loses work?

I hope that I am raising some valid concerns here

I am not doing it to disfranchise you, just pointing it out

How about if the subscription was just to export your game. You pay once for the software and get exports for a year, then after that you only pay to export your game. You can open/edit/preview your game, but not export unless you pay.

I am sorry, I was not initially aware of X3M's account being hacked and lamar 's behavior

OK phew, I'm glad we're making progress Am happy to talk to you about your concerns.

[quote:1xa0cxyi]Regardless of how long these threads lasted, they were eventually getting locked, as obviously they started to become toxic. But that stuff is all bad publicity too.

We've always just locked toxic stuff since we started. Benefit is we have a nicer community - downside I guess is someone might come and look at is as bad publicity (which quite frankly I'm not sure I beleive - lots of forums have locked threads but I guess if you want to argue that point you can believe it if you want). A trade-off we're happy with.

[quote:1xa0cxyi]The spambots have been poluting this forum for ages now and having X3M 's account hacked and product removed makes it look like security here is not handled well - directly affecting a vendor and a product on the store (I bought his product btw).

Two issues here, spam and hacked accounts. It's important they are not conflated as a single issue because they are quite different.

Spam

Yes, is a bit problem. Am taking a much more aggressive approach to it on the new website. At the moment, there is no user generated content available (but plans to allow it don't worry as per this site!). I've researched it a lot, learnt what works/doesn't work on Scirra and am extremely confident going forwards it will be less of an issue. I get it's an issue here now. Popular sites will always attract spammers.

Hacked Accounts

X3M's is the only hacked account in recent memory (I'm struggling to think of any other examples in our 6 years) that looks like it's been hacked. Your assertion that:

X3M's account hacked = our security is not handled well

Is fallacious, it could equally be the password was weak, leaked on another website and he uses the same one here, or he left his computer open, or his email was hacked etc etc. List goes on. The fact we've never seen a wide spread account breach leads me to think it's a one off and not an underlying problem with our security.

Secondly, with the new site I have upgraded the security in a host of ways. I'm not going to go into them now for a couple of reasons:

* A lot are numerous and small improvements

* It's not in our interest to talk about what parts of our security we're improving

[quote:1xa0cxyi]How integrated is the forum account with the account for using the engine?

On the new site, virtually not at all. There is some negotiation between the sites to ensure if you sign up on Construct.net though you get a Scirra.com account. We are moving away from the forum as our authentication model.

[quote:1xa0cxyi]Does construct3 prompt for dropbox password prior to getting access to the hosted project?

Can you explain what you mean please? Dropbox doesn't just allow anyone to modify anyone elses account. NO payment information is stored on our systems such as CC numbers. All payment data of that nature is handled off site with Stripe.

[quote:1xa0cxyi]Can a hacker who gained access to an account retrieve other sensitive data from the victim?

Like every online service out there, if a hacker gains access to your account they will be able to login and look at your account.

[quote:1xa0cxyi]Retrieving a stolen account - account protection - what measures are there?

Industry standard SSL encryption

HSTS implemented on Construct.net

Improved hashing algorithm for passwords

Improved rate limiting for brute forces

Improved infastructure security designed by Rackspace

Improved support interface with IP lockdown

[quote:1xa0cxyi]Will the EULA of construct3 free you from any responsibility if the victim loses work?

Yes, of course. This is completely standard for pretty much all software in existence.

My question to you now is, how many other companies have you asked these questions to? These are basically pretty bog standard questions regarding operation of a website - and I can't help but feel for some reason you might be treating us differently due to your unhappiness with the direction we're going. Am I wrong or are these concerns you have with all our competitors as well?

Secondly, I hope you appreciate me responding to you as it's apparent you have no intention of buying Construct 3 from what I can see in other forums and you seem to be one of only a very small number of users engaging in this vein of questioning.

Secondly, I hope you appreciate me responding to you as it's apparent you have no intention of buying Construct 3 from what I can see in other forums and you seem to be one of only a very small number of users engaging in this vein of questioning.

I don't want to answer in blurymind 's place, but I definitely appreciate your answer. It's helpful and informative for other users as well.

OK thanks for that, glad it's of interest to other people as well!

The spambots have been poluting this forum for ages now

As of any forums on the internet.

Concerning spam bots, Askimet, the anti spam filter does take out a lot of messages of the spam bots. There may remain a trace in the index of the forum at the moment the post is deleted, but if you attempt to reach that kind of topic, you will end up on a message telling you the topic does not exist. And the trace will disappear at the moment an actual legit post is posted.

Otherwise, moderators will delete and remove spam messages they see when they are on the forums and/or that have been reported.

And that's the last point, if you happen to see some spam bot actual posts, please feel free to use the report icon in the top right of the post/topic a moderator will look into it during the day.

Finally, some "intelligent spam" is not always easy to detect. Actual people creating "legit accounts" and posting a few "legit messages" at first. Then the account goes dormant for months and someday, a bot logs in and edit their message to post actual spam.

Hard to detect before the spam happens. And if you happen to see this sort of messages, again, PLEASE do report them.

We may have less mods during the week-end, sure, so spam may last a bit longer as well during those days.

But we haven't had a major flood spam for months, showing that the anti-spam measures are active and at work.

So unless you are referring to something I'm really unaware of (and in which case I would love for you to send me links/reports to the topics you mention so we can efficiently moderate them), I'm afraid your point/impression on spam in the forums may be actually wrong/biased.