It's necessary somehow.
If you can't see why, then you aint got any idea how selling a product works.
How else are they going to maintain or increase the size of the team?
Tell me?
I'm really interested into your strategy to pay Scirras wages.
Please enlight me, because i can't see any common sense in your statements.
Solely selling C3 at a fixed price won't make it.
I'm sure Construct 2 reached a point where they made almost no sales anymore.
Yet they've continued to work on free updates for you, all the time.
The only way Scirra maintained some additional income was with the introduction of the store with user created content.
Going with another normal sale of C3 would be a dead end at some point.
Unless they are able to bring out C4 within just a few years, and going on with C5 ....
So they would have to release a new construct when the sales are going down.
Which holds back updates to the Construct version you're currently using (just like now when we were wating for C3)
Is that what you want?
We don't know all the details of the new subscription model just yet.
Maybe they give us the option to still use Construct 3, we just won't get any further updates.
Who the heck knows, we have to wait for their final release of all the details.
Maybe they can also lower the subscription costs at some point, we will see.
Clickteam has more than just one product to sell.
Which generates of course, more income...
And Clickteam does not have much more people employed than Scirra.
In my perspective, it's not Scirra who's greedy, but the customers who are asking for everything but who're not willing to pay for it.
It feels like you guys actually think that Scirra did not think this through.
But i guess i'm talking to a wall.
I know how it works, I sell games on Steam. And that graph is pretty accurate to how it works. If you have only one product, that is not the problem. If you have a product that worths its value and you can charge whatever you want for it, of course. From my perspective, I've seen a lot of people (including me) saying they would be whilling to pay even $500 for the software (or 5 years of subscription) if we could really own it. Of course, also if C3 is a big leap from C2.
But Clickteam is not the only one. Just compare how many pay-once and how many subscription-based are out there and you'll get what is the dominant form of selling. There is tons of software developers that only relies in one product.
Also, Scirra can generate income in other ways, like they already do, with the assets store. There is tons of different and creative revenue options. They could have a basic, but fully functional standalone version of C3, and a subscription based C3 with free assets every month, free plugins, free templates, etc. Just think of something. Like a season pass of a game with dlcs.
They could charge for different export options. For example, I'm not interested in exporting anything else besides for Steam at the moment. But one day I might want to export to mobile, I would be whilling to pay extra for that.
I also like 3rd party plugins. Why not see what the community is making, turn into an official, easier to use and easier to install plugin, and sell it?
The idea of the assets store is good but is not being used at its full potential. After the release of C3, they could turn the attention to it a bit and literally make it a lot more profitable.
They were just not creative enough. They wanted to (in my view) prevent piracy with this browser/subscription thing. It only adds up. It only makes sense. These both decisions were both simply to avoid piracy. But will make them lose costumers as well.
Speaking for myself, I don't want to use a software on a browser. Imagine if you're a designer using Illustrator and Photoshop on Chrome.
I just think that this model of business will make them lose a lot of costumers, and in the long run will be less profitable than the previous one. Just see how many people are saying they will switch to something else. I could see this working only if C3 suddenly became a lot more user friendly and the dummest person could make a game on it. Because lets be fair, while its "no programming", there is a lot of programming logic behind it and before making a barely good game or creating something creative you'll need to learn a lot. Unless it becomes a point-and-click-make-a-game-in-one-day to attract adventurers that would be whilling to pay for one year only and let it go I don't see how this model will appeal to the more professional game developer that makes a living out of it. Especially being browser only. Unless you're only capable of learning Construct and can't deal with anything else, most of us are going to switch platforms.