Hello everyone! After a long time, I'm here to say my last words.
If I've known him, Ashley has always done what he wanted, right or wrong, without much concern for what the community thought. Today, whatever we say here, he won't change his mind. My words might come off as too aggressive, but many of Ashley's changes have been quite aggressive themselves. They've also been quite expensive! However, it's worth remembering that he's always reminded us that we're a small company. A small company making such radical decisions is truly disappointing, saddening, and concerning.
From what I've seen so far:
- Due to the inadequacy of C2 Plugins, Plus versions started to be released. The community used them quite extensively, one of which was SpriteFont+. But how did Ashley react to this? "Don't use the code of existing plugins in your plugins, don't share them by adding a few features to them."
The reason people did this was that the "small company" couldn't add the features that game developers wanted to existing plugins. You still haven't seen the "Paste Layer" feature in C3, have you? Rojo had done this years ago, and for free.
- With the release of Construct 3, all plugin developers had to rewrite their plugins for the C2 Runtime.
- With the release of the C3 Runtime, all plugins had to be rewritten again. Guess who we lost. (Rex Rainbow) He left because he was forced to rewrite hundreds of plugins repeatedly. Guess who fixed all these broken plugins? (The community, Plugin developers)
- Modules: Many plugins had to be fixed again.
- New Forum: We lost many example projects added to the forum. Some of them were backed up by the community.
- SDK v2: Ahh here we go again...
At every opportunity, "I get broken projects, guess why? Because of third-party addons." You try to fix broken projects even though they use third-party addons, but strangely, when we reporting bugs, you don't want any third-party addons used (You're right, that's how it should be). "Do not use third-party addons in your project."
You could cut off support to customers who use third-party addons, but instead, you always choose to make addon developers rewrite their code. You did this to discourage them, and you continue to do it knowingly. From now on, most developers will start to say goodbye, like Rex.
You have a community at your disposal that you never used, never collaborated with. They even offered you a solution, but you shut them out and left.
Have you ever told any of your customers this before? "I would say either use basic aim or design the project to avoid this happening." It's like saying, "Make simple games because C3 is only for students," isn't it?
github.com/Scirra/Construct-bugs/issues/7965
Lastly, I want to say this.
Because of the changes you've made so far, which community plugin have you fixed? None!
For the changes you made today, which plugin are you going to rewrite from scratch? None!
The community wants everything for better game development, for a better game engine. Your changes are nothing but throwing away years of effort people put into this.
Ashley. You lost, take it!