I see a lot of posts like these, and I'm left to wonder: is the issue the subscription model - which I know a lot of people aren't fans of - or the value proposition of C3 with a subscription model?

There's also a considerable number of users expressing their concerns who are afraid of getting their projects locked (with no editing) if their subscription ends.

The core of C3 is a custom-built framework we designed and developed ourselves, because we didn't think any other Javascript libraries out there were suitable. It's a pretty interesting part of the development, I'm hoping on doing some tech blogs about it in future.

That sounds impressive. I'm looking forward to those blog posts.

Both Elliott and newt are suggesting good ideas. But having a trial software that students would have to buy either way after the course and the trial period ended will really boost your numbers?

> All they need to do is drop the being locked out of your project after twelve month and it would be fine.

>

> I mentioned somewhere else on these forums that I have a suite of components for UI dev in VS which is a twelve month sub type system. But if you don't renew the sub you can't get updates, additions. or bug fixes - you do however get to keep and use the components forever after that. Additionally you can renew your sub at any time you want - even years later - at a reduced price.

>

> I can renew it now if I want, although I haven't done so for nearly two years, because there is nothing new added that I need.

>

> This way you are not milking them by expecting never ending work done to the tools, and they are not milking you by expecting you to keep paying to use the tools.

>

> Much fairer system I think.

>

The problem with that idea though is that you would indeed still be milking them, since you don't pay to keep the server running anymore, yet you still have access to it. At some point there wouldn't be money to pay for the cloud server anymore without a loss because nobody would be paying annually, yet their server would possibly need upgrades because of a larger user-base that would require a bigger server capacity and other things.

If you are a corporation with other products that are profitable, then yes it's possible but if you're a company with a one time fee product, then there's no steady income to make such a business model possible.

You may not have access to the cloud anymore, but you can still download your stuff and work offline as far as I have understood.

Then following up on the idea above: For users who stop paying, only allow to use the offline version. Also, since they won't have any updates, any potential browser update that breaks games or introduces new features would be out of those users' reach, unless they subscribe again. Btw, Tom stated, that users won't be able to edit their projects after the subscription ends, only open them. This goes for the offline version as well I think.

I agree with ErekT as well. The constant complaints on the forum proves that a lot of the users are not yet left this Community. There's still a chance to save the old userbase.

People are already complaining about not being able to edit their project after the subscription ends and calling this approach "holding the projects hostage". How having to pay for exporting would be any different?

All they need to do is drop the being locked out of your project after twelve month and it would be fine.

I mentioned somewhere else on these forums that I have a suite of components for UI dev in VS which is a twelve month sub type system. But if you don't renew the sub you can't get updates, additions. or bug fixes - you do however get to keep and use the components forever after that. Additionally you can renew your sub at any time you want - even years later - at a reduced price.

I can renew it now if I want, although I haven't done so for nearly two years, because there is nothing new added that I need.

This way you are not milking them by expecting never ending work done to the tools, and they are not milking you by expecting you to keep paying to use the tools.

Much fairer system I think.

I totally agree. While Scirra doesn't seem to go this way now, I hope that they'll consider this in the future. I'm fine with paying for updates, and I would stay subscribed just to support them, but I'd like to have the feeling that I could use the software in it's current state even if I'd stop paying.

Edit.: Also, I think the users would feel more eased with the subscription model, and wouldn't consider subscribing and developing in C3 as risky as some of the users expressed.

I think a free version with constant limitation would be more accessible for the users. For example, I won't be able to teach using a time limited trial version and the schools in my country can't really afford to pay for C3. So I downvote the trial version idea.

Just a little feedback: I'm not getting logged out all the time since I changed my password.

Edit: Nope, just happened right after I posted this.

helena I think Ashley answered at some point that it can happen in the future. Currently we don't know any more information, but it certainly would be a great feature. It's one of the functions I really liked in the Fusion 3 news.

This looks promising.

BTW, I don't see Scirra in that list of possibly affected domains.

I downloaded the full list (a .txt file around 70MB) and did a search for it. Notepad++ found it in the list.

The huge number of comments were mostly based around negative feedback regarding the subscription model. I don't thing that we can count the less, but positive comments as losing interest. The blog post views could provide a more accurate data, but only Scirra has access to that.

My personal opinion: While it seems that it's not the most successful approach a company can make to marketing, I have no problem with it. I love to get home from work to have a new blog post about features of C3.