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

Before anyone jumps down my neck on the number of posts I have, I have been a member since 2013, I’m just not a big forum poster on most sites I have accounts with & I’ll admit that I have not used Construct 2 (or other engines) in some time, but looking to get back into it development.

Regardless of my thoughts on software subscriptions (not a fan), I have read quite a number of posts regarding this and other users complaints & must say that some people’s attitudes and posts are seriously taking the 'P', there really has been no need for some of the aggressive posts directed at the Scirra guys. I can empathise with people in regards to the subscription model, but I’m sure it wasn't an easy decision knowing the back lash that would occur on their forum.

As a small business, the guys need to find a cost effective way of improving their IP & if a subscription is what they have deemed best, then either accept it or move on, which has been said countless times, give the 1st year ago at least & see how it progresses.

I am mostly interested in the new Scirra hosted build service they announced & look forward to hearing people’s experiences with it for Android/iOS when C3 is officially released, thats the deal breaker for me.

Just imagine the price going up 5 cents each time one of the communities users makes a repetitive post about their their discontent with the payment model and tags Ashley or Tom in it....

... their time is likely far more valuable then 5 cents each time they need to read the posts and reply ....

So, for the love of sanity .... please stop the attempts to get a majority of users to agree to something that will not happen and ride out their set path ....

Some of you guys are really ungrateful ...

In the end ..... there is still C2 .... noone made it an obligation to use C3 .....

For those still sceptical about subscription model, I'm going to try explaining why I think they chose that way.

Why pay once is not a good idea for scirra.

Let's say 1 user buys a licence for 100€ ... Scirra earn some cash... 100€

Now let's go to the cost for running their business:

Scirra has some costs to keep their business running. We all know that right? Server costs, staff costs, tax, licenses, phone and internet bills, office rent, printer paper, etc etc. Let's say scirra has a running cost of 1000€ / week (just as an example) If they are using a pay once model, they have to make sure they sell AT LEAST 10 new licences per week just to cover all the costs.

They have to earn 1000€ per week, to be able to pay their bills for 1000€ per week. But if they sell 10 licences per weeks, that means they get more active users, so most of their costs would increase as well.... After a year, maybe the weekly costs will be 1500 per week, they are forced to sell 15 licences per week to keep up with the costs.

So after a while.... Maybe you payed, 100€ for a licence, but every month you will cost them a little. You are using their software, You are using their forums, maybe you need support, you expect updates, bug fixes etc. Let's say every customer cost scirra 1€ per week just to keep them happy. After 100 weeks (about 2 years). You will still cost them money 1€/week, to keep you as a satisfied customer. You're still using the forums, and you're still using the software, and their support and getting updates. The only way to make sure you are not costing them money from that point is to release a new product, that hopefully you will buy. But now they have 2 products they need to maintain... the old product AND the new product. Double work to keep both groups happy.... that both expect updates, support, access to forums, etc etc.

Instead of releasing a new product every other year or so, hoping old and new users will buy it, they created C3 with a subscription model, so that they can make sure they get a steady income without having to start planning for C4 already, and taking care of all old customers, that are still costing them money. If they made C3 a pay once model, they are back to step one, they have to make sure they sell enough C3 licences every week, to cover all the costs, they have to update, and release new features to keep existing customers happy.

Locked out?

So why are you locked out when you are paying a subscription? Because..... if you subscribe for one year, but still can use, the software, the forums, get support, etc you are still costing them money...They NEED your income on a regular basis to keep scirra going as a business and continue to update their product, with new features and bug fixes.

They are not punishing anyone, getting greedy, or locking people out, they are trying to find a way to make sure you will continue to support their continued development. If they gave people full access to editing after the subscription ran out, you're still costing them money, as long as you don't subscribe again. It would be the same as selling a pay once licence. I totally understand why they moved over to a subscription model, but sadly many people here still don't...

I understand why they get frustrated, when people don't understand their decision to move to a subscription model. Many customers don't see that scirra NEED their support on a regular basis to continue to provide a good product, without having to worry about get X amount of new users every week just to keep scirra alive as a business...

Principles aside

If you like C2/C3, please put your "principles" aside, and try to understand WHY they moved to a subscription model. They are doing a great job, they are active to answer to your concerns, and it's not an overpriced product, for what you get. Asking you to pay once a year for a product that you love to use, is not too much to ask... hobbyist or professional. It's still worth the money... I would also hope for a monthly option, because I can also be inactive and during extended periods of time, but they probably have a reason for not offering that at the moment, but maybe it will come.

Keep up the good work, Scirra team..., and people still sceptic towards "renting model" read through my post again, and maybe you will understand. It's purely a business decision to stay afloat, and to be able to provide updates, bugfixes, features, support for years to come for existing customers, without the worry to get more sales and getting new customers to stay afloat.

For those still sceptical about subscription model, I'm going to try explaining why I think they chose that way.

Why pay once is not a good idea for scirra.

Let's say 1 user buys a licence for 100€ ... Scirra earn some cash... 100€

Now let's go to the cost for running their business:

Scirra has some costs to keep their business running. We all know that right? Server costs, staff costs, tax, licenses, phone and internet bills, office rent, printer paper, etc etc. Let's say scirra has a running cost of 1000€ / week (just as an example) If they are using a pay once model, they have to make sure they sell AT LEAST 10 new licences per week just to cover all the costs.

They have to earn 1000€ per week, to be able to pay their bills for 1000€ per week. But if they sell 10 licences per weeks, that means they get more active users, so most of their costs would increase as well.... After a year, maybe the weekly costs will be 1500 per week, they are forced to sell 15 licences per week to keep up with the costs.

So after a while.... Maybe you payed, 100€ for a licence, but every month you will cost them a little. You are using their software, You are using their forums, maybe you need support, you expect updates, bug fixes etc. Let's say every customer cost scirra 1€ per week just to keep them happy. After 100 weeks (about 2 years). You will still cost them money 1€/week, to keep you as a satisfied customer. You're still using the forums, and you're still using the software, and their support and getting updates. The only way to make sure you are not costing them money from that point is to release a new product, that hopefully you will buy. But now they have 2 products they need to maintain... the old product AND the new product. Double work to keep both groups happy.... that both expect updates, support, access to forums, etc etc.

Instead of releasing a new product every other year or so, hoping old and new users will buy it, they created C3 with a subscription model, so that they can make sure they get a steady income without having to start planning for C4 already, and taking care of all old customers, that are still costing them money. If they made C3 a pay once model, they are back to step one, they have to make sure they sell enough C3 licences every week, to cover all the costs, they have to update, and release new features to keep existing customers happy.

Locked out?

So why are you locked out when you are paying a subscription? Because..... if you subscribe for one year, but still can use, the software, the forums, get support, etc you are still costing them money...They NEED your income on a regular basis to keep scirra going as a business and continue to update their product, with new features and bug fixes.

They are not punishing anyone, getting greedy, or locking people out, they are trying to find a way to make sure you will continue to support their continued development. If they gave people full access to editing after the subscription ran out, you're still costing them money, as long as you don't subscribe again. It would be the same as selling a pay once licence. I totally understand why they moved over to a subscription model, but sadly many people here still don't...

I understand why they get frustrated, when people don't understand their decision to move to a subscription model. Many customers don't see that scirra NEED their support on a regular basis to continue to provide a good product, without having to worry about get X amount of new users every week just to keep scirra alive as a business...

Principles aside

If you like C2/C3, please put your "principles" aside, and try to understand WHY they moved to a subscription model. They are doing a great job, they are active to answer to your concerns, and it's not an overpriced product, for what you get. Asking you to pay once a year for a product that you love to use, is not too much to ask... hobbyist or professional. It's still worth the money... I would also hope for a monthly option, because I can also be inactive and during extended periods of time, but they probably have a reason for not offering that at the moment, but maybe it will come.

Keep up the good work, Scirra team..., and people still sceptic towards "renting model" read through my post again, and maybe you will understand. It's purely a business decision to stay afloat, and to be able to provide updates, bugfixes, features, support for years to come for existing customers, without the worry to get more sales and getting new customers to stay afloat.

Everyone understands why they're doing it. People are fighting to make it better. There is an opportunity for Scirra to get exactly what they need from us and us to get exactly what we need from them if a proper dialogue can be established but there is a barrier and it's a refusal to change. C3's wonky launch reminds me of that time Valve tried to introduce paid mods on Steam. There was a huge backlash and in no time at all they had (quite sensibly) completely reversed that decision. Scirra's rental model, compared to many other software subscription models is shortsighted, with little attention payed to the needs or wants of its users as demonstrated by the lock out. If they want respect and loyalty they need to be less dismissive of concerns such as people being locked out of their own hard work, which is quite frankly insulting.

Now I realise that the wheels are already in motion, and Ashley has said they want to try to go ahead with their current plans. That's fair enough and it's his right to do that. They probably can't change course at this stage even if they wanted to. I will probably subscribe to C3, but I will remain highly critical of its rental model if changes aren't brought about for better users rights. As many have pointed out, others are already copying the event system - your competition is all over this. You guys really need to up your game so hear me loud and clear - your proposed rental system sucks but you can still fix it. And by fix it I don't mean go back to one off payments. I'm happy to subscribe, just work out a solution for the lock out - no one wants to live in a future like that.

signaljacker

There's already a perfect solution to the lockout, that solves all the problems. Resubscribe... and you're not locked out anymore. Easy as that!

If you don't pay you're locking yourself out.

I will still maintain that anyone claiming "lockout" doesn't really have valid reason to make a fuzz. That's just my personal opinion... I just feel that people claiming "lockout" and then tries drive an agenda to get some kind of "free access" after their subscription runs out, why? this is what I don't get..., which I don't think is fair at all for the developers. Why would they spend time to implement special features to allow people to use their livelihood for free, even if it's just small fixes, rexports, to old projects etc?

Personally I think monthly option should solve that. If you just need to make a few minor fixes, a month access for a reduced price instead of a year would seem pretty fair.

I've been very critical in the past too, even a bit harsh with my comments at times, but it's time to accept that C3 is subscription based and that's it. Pay for it or don't. Everything that needed to be said has been said. Let's all be reasonable people and move past this discussion. Let's not poison this forum and ruin other's enjoyment. We should all go our separate ways, if we must. If C3 isn't for you, there are other options available to you and more will pop up.

We all like making games, so let's just have fun doing that.

I will still maintain that anyone claiming "lockout" doesn't really have valid reason to make a fuzz. That's just my personal opinion... I just feel that people claiming "lockout" and then tries drive an agenda to get some kind of "free access" after their subscription runs out, why?

With many other subscription based software, when the subscription ends you stop getting updates but you still have the last available version to access and edit your projects. That's why people are complaining about a edit lockout.

We can't do that with the online version of C3, since Scirra want to maintain a single version which is fair enough, hence my proposal to allow edit access with the standalone version.

All it would really require is restricting the download/update of the standalone version to current subscribers, same way export services are restricted to current subscribers, with the onus being on users to download a version before their subscription ends.

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 had suggested something like that previously, but Ashley has stated elsewhere that he doesn't want to go down the paid exporter route of some of their competitors.

On reflection, I can sort of see the reasoning behind this, as there would probably be complaints from some users about why you have to pay for all export options when you only want to export to Android/apk, for example.

[quote:q2qd00am]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.

Thanks for letting us know what happened with — I was planning to use the as-yet-unreleased version 1.0 of B3D for my project, but it looks like I will need to fall back to Q3D until development on B3D resumes.

I still have my fingers crossed for someone to port one of the 3D plugins to C3. In their current forms, Q3D and and B3D add a lot of functionality to C2, but losing X3M is a big blow to my hopes of a C3 port.

My next suggestion is the pay per event type method.

10 cents for triggers

25 cents for if then types

50 cents for an else

50 dollars for each "for each object", or "every tick"

Yeah, some of y'all are gonna be broke.

For all those throwing in comparisons with other products .....

Just because my neighbor drives a Ferrari, doesn't entitle me to having one neither.

We hear you loud and clear RE monthly option. Right now as someone else guessed we're too close to change anything. We've had discussions in the office which we're all quite positive about where once you've paid for your first year you can then pay monthly.

Again, this is only internal discussions at the moment, and there's no rush to implement this as we've got a lot of other things to be getting on with and if we did implement it it would take a year before anyone could take advantage of it anyway.

We can't do that with the online version of C3, since Scirra want to maintain a single version which is fair enough, hence my proposal to allow edit access with the standalone version.

This severely complicates support. If someone on a 6 month old version complains about a bug - what do we do? Or, Chrome introduce a breaking change. We have to go back and update every single version. This quickly becomes a maintenance nightmare. We prefer to just have everyone on the latest and greatest version.

My next suggestion is the pay per event type method.

10 cents for triggers

25 cents for if then types

50 cents for an else

50 dollars for each "for each object", or "every tick"

Yeah, some of y'all are gonna be broke.

I know Ashley, Tom and the Scirra team deserve more money, but that would make them instant millionaires if half the capxs people ask for help on were imported into C3

For all those throwing in comparisons with other products .....

Just because my neighbor drives a Ferrari, doesn't entitle me to having one neither.

Half the requests for new features are based on what other products have, why can't that apply to the business model also?

I'm not saying we're entitled to everything others have, I'm just saying what I think is more likely to make people buy/rent Scirra's product.

> For all those throwing in comparisons with other products .....

>

> Just because my neighbor drives a Ferrari, doesn't entitle me to having one neither.

>

Half the requests for new features are based on what other products have, why can't that apply to the business model also?

I'm not saying we're entitled to everything others have, I'm just saying what I think is more likely to make people buy/rent Scirra's product.

Yes, so ,... you have done a marketing research have you ?

Or just on the products that suited you ?

> We can't do that with the online version of C3, since Scirra want to maintain a single version which is fair enough, hence my proposal to allow edit access with the standalone version.

>

This severely complicates support. If someone on a 6 month old version complains about a bug - what do we do? Or, Chrome introduce a breaking change. We have to go back and update every single version. This quickly becomes a maintenance nightmare. We prefer to just have everyone on the latest and greatest version.

As with C2, if someone complains about a bug in an old version, they are told they need to update first, which in this case would mean re-subscribing - which to me is fair enough, as one of the benefits of subscription is updates and bug fixes.

And I'm not suggesting that Scirra actually maintains old versions either, only that the standalone stops getting updates. If a user didn't download a version before their subscription ended or they accidentally delete it, then they are out of luck and need to subscribe again.

We hear you loud and clear RE monthly option. Right now as someone else guessed we're too close to change anything. We've had discussions in the office which we're all quite positive about where once you've paid for your first year you can then pay monthly.

Again, this is only internal discussions at the moment, and there's no rush to implement this as we've got a lot of other things to be getting on with and if we did implement it it would take a year before anyone could take advantage of it anyway.

Thank you for listening, and that does sound like a reasonable compromise for some of the concerns people have raised.

And it's perfectly understandable that you are too far along with your current plans to change everything right now, so I for one appreciate that you are willing to make changes, even if they are a year away.