I'm worried about the future.

I agree with Rayek on this one!

That paid subscription model - quite on the contrary guarantees that one day you will no longer be able to open your game project. History has shown us many times - users being left out to dry

It does not in any way help your project or you. It's there simply to lock you on continued payment, regardless if you actually make money from the game engine or not or need to update it for new features.

I would be ok if the rent payments were so that the engine gets new features. But they really aren't - the developer can then continue charging you simply for using the software. Once they have enough users locked to that model, they will no longer worry about meeting any feature requests - as pressure on their side to improve the software so people buy the update is gone.

One day when they decide to drop support for the software, even if you want to pay rent- you will be locked out of the house - with all of your stuff still in it.

If Scirra goes away, and Chrome makes an update that breaks all your C2 games, how far up the creek will you be?

If scirra drops support for it one day, you will simply not be able to use the editor on any of your game projects- even if you want to pay.

The dependency on chrome is another factor altogether

If scirra drops support for it one day, you will simply not be able to use the editor on any of your game projects- even if you want to pay.

The dependency on chrome is another factor altogether

The only way that will happen is if Scirra goes out of business.

Understandably the thing they are likely to drop support of is the free version of C2.

So the risk you are looking to mitigate here is us going out of business and totally stopping support of our products?

If we did go completely out of business, shut the doors, and we all went and got other jobs and completely stopped selling Construct, Scirra is completely dissolved, at that point I don't see why we wouldn't give it away or open source it. I mean this event would currently appear to be highly unlikely.

As others have pointed out, even though Construct 2 is buy once, if we go under in the future and a new bug is introduced by Windows, Chrome or any other supporting software what then? This is a risk with ALL software.

Thats a problem you would have with any kind of software.

So the risk you are looking to mitigate here is us going out of business and totally stopping support of our products?

If we did go completely out of business, shut the doors, and we all went and got other jobs and completely stopped selling Construct, Scirra is completely dissolved, at that point I don't see why we wouldn't give it away or open source it. I mean this event would currently appear to be highly unlikely.

As others have pointed out, even though Construct 2 is buy once, if we go under in the future and a new bug is introduced by Windows, Chrome or any other supporting software what then? This is a risk with ALL software.

You're kinda making a case for choosing open source software here.

Software rental business models have been a primary reason to me to switch to open source in my pipeline as much as I can. As long as the community is a supportive one, open source software can be as good or better as commercial alternatives, e.g. Blender, Krita, OpenToonz, ... One reason why I have been teaching myself Godot lately. At the very least you yourself and the community has access to the source code in the worst case scenarios.

I'll have to try that sometime.

Magically make a living by making my code open source.

You're kinda making a case for choosing open source software here.

And what do you think happens if key people who maintain open source projects move on? Even open source projects have that sort of risk.

If we did go completely out of business, shut the doors, and we all went and got other jobs and completely stopped selling Construct, Scirra is completely dissolved, at that point I don't see why we wouldn't give it away or open source it. I mean this event would currently appear to be highly unlikely.

I like the way Scirra thinks about this. It should reassure anyone who is worried about Scirra's death in the future. Let's hope it never comes to that.

I'll have to try that sometime.

Magically make a living by making my code open source.

Lol. You just made my day.

> You're kinda making a case for choosing open source software here.

>

And what do you think happens if key people who maintain open source projects move on? Even open source projects have that sort of risk.

Of course, I never said this isn't the case. All human endeavours die at some point. At least with open source you cannot suddenly be cut off from your applications for work, unlike rental software (for various reasons both on the developer's part or the publisher's part).

I'll have to try that sometime.

Magically make a living by making my code open source.

Where did I state anyone should open source their software? Now that you mention it though, many people are making a nice living out of open sourcing their work, by the way. You are much too one-dimensional in your thinking, my dear Newt.

Open sourcing Construct 3 makes for an interesting discussion, actually. It may actually work in favour of Construct's development, and allow Construct 3 to flourish in ways beyond what we can imagine. It all depends on how you monetize and approach it. The Blender foundation seems to be doing just fine financially, and they keep expanding their services (yes, even with subscriptions to content ).

Just imagine how Scirra could focus on building professional-grade games and improve the software in a real-world scenario, bringing developers and creatives together in a similar way as the Blender foundation - it has worked well for them, so why not for Scirra? I see possibilities, not limitations in a business model like that.

All depends on how one approaches their business. Not saying Ashley and Tom should go open source, though! (I certainly wouldn't mind, and I'd sponsor them with a $10 a month, like I do Blender).

I like the way Scirra thinks about this. It should reassure anyone who is worried about Scirra's death in the future. Let's hope it never comes to that.

Tom may say this may happen, but of course there is no guarantee that it actually will, of course. I have seen too many software companies go under that stated even unequivocally that they would open source their code, but it never happened. EditShare (company behind LightWorks video editor) promised to open source their code six years ago, and nothing happened as of yet.

Not saying Tom intentions aren't honourable and honest - I am certain they are. And many dead software companies have indeed released their products either for free or open sourced them after their demise, so there's that.

No-one knows what the future holds for sure, though. For me a rental business model is just too icky and uncertain to touch even with hardened gloves on.

To give you an example of another company who has a subsription model.

I am developing also with Xojo a Rapid Application Development tool. Here are the licence fees for one year :

Desktop Lite : 99 USD / year

Desktop Full : 299 USD / year

WEB : 299 USD / year

IOS : 299 USD / year (not worth because of the bugs and limitations)

PRO : 699 USD / year

Enterprise : 1999 USD / year

These values are without VAT. If you need to pay VAT, you have to add the VAT amount to the above numbers.

Believe me, Desktop Lite, is very limited. With Desktop Full you can only compile for one platform. If you need to compile for more platforms, you need the PRO version.

If you do not pay your licence anymore, you can no longer update or compile once it is expired. However if you update once your licence expired, you can still use their free version but it is limited. If you choose not to update, you can still compile with the last version your licence covers.

I do not hear people there complaining about the yearly subscription. You can compare Scirra with Xojo inc. I also pay my licence fee to Xojo inc. I do not find it a risk.

We all have to get paid to make a living. It is not different with Scirra. Still I believe the future for Scirra and Construct looks bright. No other game development tool uses the Construct futuristic approach for creating games by events and behaviours.

Like the Scirra people explained, they where way ahead of their time to use HTML5, Construct 2 is already its time way ahead and now with Construct 3 around the corner, I am sure we did not see the last of it.

Keep up the good work Scirra !!!

"All depends on how one approaches their business. Not saying Ashley and Tom should go open source, though! (I certainly wouldn't mind, and I'd sponsor them with a $10 a month, like I do Blender)."

So that model depends a bit on people giving them money every month?

With open source, basically the people who use it have full access to it. If there is something they don't like in it (such as DRM or limitations imposed by design), they can disable it.

If there is a feature missing, they develop and add it, or hire someone to develop it.

Open source projects such as blender and krita have been incredibly successful recently.

The blender foundation is doing quite well at the moment - and is able to hire quite a few full time developers even.

But they have worked to get there, creating a foundation and running it. Simply releasing the source code is not enough to make a project succesful or get it to point where it is making lot's of money.

Tom

Take Unreal as an example if you will. Unreal 4 is open source, it's free to use and it's huge. The developers made it open source, because that way they allow devs to get in there and help them make it better- contributing code, learning the code so they can fix bugs. But they are still charging for the engine businesses. If you are selling a game that was made with it - Epic takes 5% of your profits. That is their moto

[quote:33q27jvn]Pay a 5% royalty on games and applications you release. We succeed when you succeed.

https://www.unrealengine.com/what-is-unreal-engine-4

Being open source does not necessarily mean that the engine dev makes no money. On the contrary, if they know how to play their cards, they make a lot of money and have developers and users maintain it for free for them.

But as said before, you can't just release the source code and expect it to thrive. You need a well documented code that new devs would be thrilled to contribute to. You need some funding to make it popular- by doing actual projects with the engine- that advertise it's capabilities.

Godot devs are also a games company, they have been using their own engine on many games, on many platforms (consoles including)

https://okamgames.com/

The blender foundation has been doing open projects every year- to both push the limits of blender and advertise it.

Recently gdevelop dev made a very successful kickstarter game ( http://compilgames.net/#bub-game ) - both to get some funding for his engine, but also to push it to the limits. In order to get a better performance for the game, he had to move his entire core to cocos2d - allowing him to export to native android for that game.

krita devs also have been relying on kickstarter campaigns every year for funding:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/kr ... rt-awesome

That way they managed to add animation features and now vector features as well.

The successful open source projects are active projects, being run by a foundation with set goals and healthy communities. There is constantly something made by their community and devs. The devs are the community. If the project dies, that means that there is probably not enough interest in it. Construct never had a problem with that - it has always had a huge amount of interest.

I know it's not likely that it will ever go open source, but I just want to point out that even microsoft is going open source with a lot of things nowadays. They have been doing so, because they see that it is good for their business

One thing that could be considered is releasing a part of it as open source, but putting in optional web services that are not free.

This is what Amazon did exactly. They bought the cry engine, added their web services to it and open sourced it - called it lumberyard.

https://aws.amazon.com/lumberyard/

Their goal is not to sell the engine, but sell their service! The engine being open source and free is the lure. Developers like open source, because it is flexible. They can tailor it to their project better. A company that is really interested in selling web services and has something special to offer to devs gives access to the engine for free and sells the services around that. Isn't that what Unity is doing as well?

Even King has released their engine for free (but not open source):

http://www.defold.com/

With them I am not sure what the deal is. I think that they are interested in becoming an indie games publisher, however the indie community has not much trust for them atm because of court cases they had for the "saga" name with an indie guy. King claims that they are making it free with no attachments in order to get more people to test and use it - help them make it better.

Well, even though C2 is not open source unless Tom and Ashley have included some hidden way to shut off all of our use of the engine then even if they go under you still have your version and license to continue producing games using that engine and as long as HTML5 is an accepted game format somewhere you will still be able to publish your games.

That is why I am not personally keen on a C3 subscription model that could be shut down and you could lose your assets if you rely on cloud storage.

I understand it will work without a cloud connection but how limited will that be?

I want to own the engine and know that engine will still work in case the business goes defunct.

Not that I foresee that happening with Scirra but it could and businesses do shut down and stop producing updates for old engines. 001 Game Maker is an example. Great engine that lost support when they went to a subscription model and stopped supporting old versions and doing updates. Got too expensive.

I'll have to try that sometime.

Magically make a living by making my code open source.

Enjoying your Linux servers? Android OS? Html5, even?