winkr7
That is the good spirit. I also will pay gladly the yearly subscription fee. Ashley mentioned very good reasons why the "one time payment" model didn't work and how the new subscription give Scirra better revenue to keep up working on adding more exciting features.
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I preferred the new subscription model from the very beginning, because in my humble opinion, it will secure the future development of our favourite game development tool.
And believe me, we will see more nice features added in the future. I also expect much of the rewrite of the new runtime.
In case you write your own software (like I do), or sell your own created games, do you sell lifetime licences which gives you one time payments but you have to maintain and keep updating regularly? I am sure you do not, just like myself because you will find yourself quickly without enough income to even update your software.
Only the sun comes up for free, but even with the Sun, you cannot enjoy sunshine every day.
I too am a software developer, and it's pretty standard nobody gets a lifetime license. There are some companies that offer lifetime licenses, but they are few and far between. Maintenance updates are always free, new major version releases are paid for, it's a fairly standard practice and many companies survive just fine. Their subscription model will not pay the bills if nobody subscribes. I forsee the company either changing their pricing model, or fading away eventually.