If you think about it for a second, if a company is willing to increase the price of a product no longer getting features that is already full of bugs according to the bug reports then it is only a matter of time before they jack up the price of C3.
With the announcement of the new C3 runtime, you bet the subscription cost is going up in the near future.
I was thinking the same thing. There's nothing stopping them from increasing the subscription price when the new runtime comes around.
I also made a related point a long time ago- when they talked about browsers always changing and being up to date, etc..
[quote:2d0x4hfg]Scirra can argue that the reliance on browsers forces having to do maintenance, etc, and charging for keeping everything working with the changing browser vendors. Will these users understand that? I doubt this is something they would consider in their purchase (probably not the primary consideration), and if anything it might be more of a deterrent if they do because they'd realize that things can change whenever a browser updates.
But maybe that will improve over time? If it does then why the subscription model? If it improves, then maintenance will become lighter for Scirra. The subscription kind of gives the impression that the stability will never improve.
There's also this that was said by a Scirra employee:
[quote:2d0x4hfg]We were surprised when we looked at our data at how many impulse purchases we see for Construct 2 (people who seem to buy and only use for a short period of time).
Which suggests, that people pick up Construct, use it for a little while and then never use it again. A subscription model doesn't encourage users to work at their own pace. When I began working with Construct, I took several months off doing other stuff. It wasn't a tool I used everyday. So for new users, a subscription model leaves a lot of uncertainty as to whether or not it's worth going through the year or so having to learn and start at the beginning, etc..
Then there was this response:
[quote:2d0x4hfg]Previously with Construct 2, these users didn't really have any impact on what we do. They are happy to pay us, use it for a brief while then move on for whatever reason (we think it was mainly impulse purchasing - I've bought AAA games on Steam before that I've barely played, guessing it's the same sort of behaviour).
With Construct 3, we're wanting to keep and engage users more, we're obviously incentivised to do so.
The shift from Construct 2 to Construct 3 will force us to invest more in retention rather than purely attracting new customers. This can come in lots of forms, better learning resources, better community engagement, free asset packs/game templates etc etc. I know I would say this, but even if you're cynical about the whole subscription thing that has to be a positive for customers.
The fact is we feel the market is fairly saturated, and we're relying on a steady flow of new customers. Nothing wrong with this, but we have bigger plans. We feel adjusting our revenue model is our best shot at achieving those plans.
Currently due to new hires, expenditures etc we're running marginally profitable/break even. This is fine as we're on the cusp of a new product launch (a lot of companies lose money in this period!) but we've pretty much hit the ceiling of how far we can grow the Scirra team with our current revenue levels.
So yeah... they want to "invest more in
retention
rather than purely attracting new customers"
You can read into that however you want I guess... :/
For me it reads that they want more control of the userbase, and not give them the freedom to leave or work at their own pace.
I don't want them to dangle a carrot in front of me and try to lead me into some cage where it is difficult to get out of, etc.. They should focus on make the product good and then new users will use it longer. If they are concerned about new users not continuing to use their product, maybe that is because the users had reasonable reason why.