Why can't we buy a month?

Isn't the whole point of a monthly subscription to entice people that aren't feeling like paying upfront? I was actually interested in buying just a month of premium because I'm pretty off-and-on with my development and I thought spending 12 on a month and working would be better than spending 100 for a year and wasting it.

It just seems a little malicious to me with how they increased the price for the alternative (Construct 2) and didn't make the new version consumer-friendly with a monthly buy.

If we could have a monthly subscription I think that'd be really good. There's a lot of people that work good in short bursts of productivity and aren't willing to spent $100 for something they'll barely use for the rest of the year. Untapped market there guys, come on.

I find myself really torn too by the pricing as an occasional hobbyist.

I bought C2 and was happy to pay the money to support the company because over time it's allowed me to tinker with ideas. I would like to continue to support the company with C3 but find it difficult to justify pulling the trigger because I'm such a low usage/occasional user of the product.

I do have a discount voucher for the first year, this is true but I feel like the annual licencing (which is probably very fair for heavier users) a roadblock.

In the end I'll never likely make money from using it and an annual subscription that I might only use for a month a year is a terrible waste, as much as a like the C3 product. :(

A per month option would be OK as requested above, (I'd buy the 1st year no problem then) or a one off purchased like C2 would probably be a preference - even if it was only for smaller or non-commercial projects, but less restrictive than the free one...

I can sympathise with this point of view, but from a bluntly realistic perspective, I imagine that the majority of Construct users are infrequent, hobbyist devs who use the tool every now and then (I'd love the data on this, it's something that Scirra track).

With this in mind, they'd lose an awful lot of money if they swapped to monthly payments. It would be very easy to imagine a situation whereby the majority of users would by a handful of month subs a year, which would cost Scirra about a 3rd of their revenue from an annual sub model.

So the compromise then would be to dramatically increase the monthly sub cost; which wouldn't work for their market (entry level game dev and education).

The current model simply makes sense - it's a very low price compared to other services. There might be a middle ground for a sliding discount i.e

1 month = £18

3 month = £40

6 month = £55

1 year = £79

However I'm confident smarter minds than mine have considered and dismissed this; it's likely too complex, and as stated, the annual price is competitive enough.

I can sympathise with this point of view, but from a bluntly realistic perspective, I imagine that the majority of Construct users are infrequent, hobbyist devs who use the tool every now and then (I'd love the data on this, it's something that Scirra track).

With this in mind, they'd lose an awful lot of money if they swapped to monthly payments. It would be very easy to imagine a situation whereby the majority of users would by a handful of month subs a year, which would cost Scirra about a 3rd of their revenue from an annual sub model.

So the compromise then would be to dramatically increase the monthly sub cost; which wouldn't work for their market (entry level game dev and education).

The current model simply makes sense - it's a very low price compared to other services. There might be a middle ground for a sliding discount i.e

1 month = £18

3 month = £40

6 month = £55

1 year = £79

However I'm confident smarter minds than mine have considered and dismissed this; it's likely too complex, and as stated, the annual price is competitive enough.

I don't disagree really with anything you've said there except I note that many other services (I'm assuming game engines here?) can be had for free or free for hobbyist situations (Unity/UE4/Godot etc) and Gamemaker 1/2 are very competitively priced with a one off purchase (I did buy and try both and wouldn't have done that tbh if I could have just bought C3 instead).

However, I've tried the others and I prefer C2/C3 and appreciate the whole ethos of Scirra.

A suggestion specifically from my perspective;

There's a free option for C3 and that's really great but I find none of my basic projects fit within the model because I tend to need a minimum of 3 layers. Background, foreground and hud. The other restrictions are probably fine for me unless I find something I want to take further, in which case I'd be happy to pay for a subscription because I'd be using it more at that point.

I'm not asking for 3 layers on the basic free model either, if there was an extra option to open up the free version further (this model already exists for registered accounts) to small users for a one-off price. Let's call this another 'tier' in the free model rather than a different pricing model for the full version. "Freemium"? "Free plus"? (I realise you have to be careful how you name things these days!) "Basic"?

That's something I'd be happy to support because I do want to give Scirra some money, it's just subscriptions don't really work for me.

For me, I've decided I should just use up my discount voucher for the first year and see if I use C3 enough during that time.

When I get to year 2 I can make a decision then if I renew or move back to C2 or I could even be doing something entirely different at that point.

Realistically, a monthly subscription doesn't make any sense for this kind of service. I'm completely new to game-making and chose C3 after researching a lot of different engines. Sometimes, I'm really busy with work and don't have much time to get on and work on the game, and sometimes I run into an issue in the game and I have to take some time away to try to make the logic work. Then, sometimes I have a random breakthrough or burst of creativity and I spend days at a time working on it.

A monthly subscription would be more expensive in the long run, and would be more of a hassle if I had an idea and had to wait until I signed back up for a new month. It's much more cost-effective and beneficial to pay the incredibly low price of $100 a year and not have to think about it again.

Besides, I don't know about you, but I hate having a ton of random monthly subscriptions come out of my bank account each month. I buy netflix/amazon/etc gift cards at the beginning of the year just to avoid the monthly draft from my account.

To be honest, I was sceptical at first, having already bought C2 with a one off payment, but I have to say this business model (with intention) has allowed a great deal of income stream stability, which as far as I have witnessed has resulted in some fantastic new features in C3, with a blazing fast Development cycle and all in a couple of years.

The pace of C3 development probably could only have been achieved with this kind of stability, which allows the employment of more staff and income continuity.

The only thing I would say is maybe a 6 month subscription at a slightly inflated price would be a concession/comprimise to those who do not want to, or cannot commit to an annual subscription.

cheers.

Our whole planet is crippled by this annual cycle. The plants all die, the snow falls, the plants come back. I am just sorry to see Sierra buys into it too.

Our whole planet is crippled by this annual cycle. The plants all die, the snow falls, the plants come back. I am just sorry to see Sierra buys into it too.

Who? That games developer from the 90s?

This topic has been done to death already, but I can't help pointing out that I was the sole developer of Construct 2, and it was released in 2011. That kept going for about 6 years, and I think it's pretty obvious working alone with one-off-payments and then supporting software indefinitely is not sustainable, and also results in a much slower pace of improvement to the software. I get that subscription-fatigue is a thing, but really it's for the best - look at how much faster Construct 3 is improving now, and this time we can keep this up indefinitely because we have a more sustainable model. Usually at this point people start throwing in random other payment models they just thought of - it's really been done to death, we've made the decision and I think it was the right one.

This topic has been done to death already, but I can't help pointing out that I was the sole developer of Construct 2, and it was released in 2011. That kept going for about 6 years, and I think it's pretty obvious working alone with one-off-payments and then supporting software indefinitely is not sustainable, and also results in a much slower pace of improvement to the software. I get that subscription-fatigue is a thing, but really it's for the best - look at how much faster Construct 3 is improving now, and this time we can keep this up indefinitely because we have a more sustainable model. Usually at this point people start throwing in random other payment models they just thought of - it's really been done to death, we've made the decision and I think it was the right one.

Well, computer science was invented long ago and the subscription model has never been used like today.

So, how do you explain that most of the programs of the 70's 80's 90's 00's have existed without a subscription model?

This can help me understand this business model:

Other companies in the past, e.g. in the 90s, did a waterfall style model where they released updates every year or so, incremented the version number, boxed it up, sent it to the shop shelves (who does that any more?) and sold it all over again. In this day and age, and particularly with browser-based software, this is out of date. Besides, you still end up with the "I have to pay again" complaints. This is also exactly what I anticipated:

Thank you.

With suspicions I'm afraid you're wrong, well ... how should I then ask the question so you do not suspect bad intentions?

If you have that suspicion then it seems good to leave it here, I do not want to go down that road although I see no problem in which you contribute your arguments to defend the subscription business model, even when you do not like the questions because, as I said before, now I can understand something better.