Ashley
I'm not really sure about other companies terms and conditions either, I only ever compared Construct 3 to Construct 2, and Construct Classic, and I mentioned Klick and Play once. And if I was about to go read a bunch of other products Terms and Conditions (I really just want to make games and apps, not read this stuff, jeez), then I'd be stuck because I don't know any other Game Development software that is both browser-based only, and subscription based (there's the one free competitor but, that's free and has an offline installer).
Construct 3 is the first software subscription I've ever paid for, perhaps maybe that's why I'm panicing now about the future, and perhaps that's why I'm coming off as uneducated and frustrated. If it's the case that all "browser based subscription software" do not have these terms and no company wants to add them, then I think this is a very valuable lesson for me and I will have to be much more careful with subscriptions and then... I don't know, pay money based on pure trust that Scirra will sunset C3 gracefully.
I want to emphasise again, the money that I will have paid:
Construct 2 is 8 years old, and people still use it and can open all their project files indefinitely, for £70, and edit them if they have their licence key file.
Construct 3 for 8 years, minimum, £679.92.
You cannot brush this off for a hopeful third party to be able to rewrite the Construct 3 editor/runtime.
Am I missing something here? Because I'm feeling very alone in my opinion. I'm happy to pay Scirra £679 over 8 years, as long as there was a legally binding item in the terms and conditions as I've mentioned in this thread.
Without a legally binding item in terms and conditions, what if "the next Scirra CEO" decides "eh, nah, close C3 down", then ALL of us customers have no way to continue with their projects, and we have no legal grounds to do anything about this.
In a lighter tone, perhaps Scirra could take the stance in an industry first, and provide what I'm suggesting which will give customers a sense of security and will make committing long-term to C3 much more appealing. Or not. It's up to you guys, it just striked me that this would be something Scirra would stand up for, I don't know why I had this idea.
AllanR
Thanks for the reply. I'm not familiar with many programming environments that are browser-based and subscription-based to research this, I did assume that this concept of browser-based subscriptions was a new thing as most people weren't on board a few years ago with C3 being browser-based to begin with.
Exported projects are our only hope for preservation of our work (IF something happened to C3), and within the c3p file, if the code is that readable and it's that simple to not require C3, then wouldn't Scirra be concerned about a third-party runtime appearing right now?
We can recover assets from a c3p file, sure, but if you backed up your files, then, you probably backed up your assets and original files if organised and backed up correctly (although it is nice to be able to recover if ALL you had was your c3p file).