New Pay Model

[OPEC]

MOHAB, people hate your idea, the vast majority of DCS community likes the current model, take it!

 

 

Grow up, will ya? If you can not add anything constructive to the topic, leave it alone.

Edited June 12, 2020 by OPEC

[Vertigo72]

the vast majority of DCS community likes the current model

 

You mean they like having new unfinished buggy modules, while there is an endless and increasing list of known bugs and missing features in the older ones, while we suffer unplayable VR performance, have been waiting for years and years for vulkan or new clouds or new dynamic campaigns? No, I actually think they dont like that. But they do not seem to understand that is a logical consequence of the current model that they "like". That shouting on the forums wont change that, but a different business model might.

Edited June 12, 2020 by Vertigo72

[Vertigo72]

The customers say NO to DCS being a subscription service! :thumbdown:

 

Lets be clear, are they saying "no, I dont want to pay for a subscription" (because I already paid enough) or are they saying "you should not be allowed to have a subscription" ?

 

If its the latter, Im really curious how you motivate that or even why you think you should have any say on the matter. No one is saying (or at least I am not saying) people who already own modules should lose access to them. Subscriptions would therefore be optional and target primarily new users who do not yet have a large investment in DCS modules, or dont want to commit to a large investment, or can not afford it up front. Or want to test modules before they buy. If you object to that, its as ridiculous as objecting to the free trial or that I would take a loan from the bank to buy all the DCS modules in one go and pay it off over 5 years. How is that your business?

 

If its the former, then who cares? Do not use the option if you dont like it. Ask the people who currently have not paid a dime to ED if they would pay if there is a subscription model. Its their vote that matters, not yours.

Edited June 12, 2020 by Vertigo72

[MiG21bisFishbedL]

That shouting on the forums wont change that, but a different business model might.

 

Or torpedo it.

[Rex]

My 2.5 Cents

 

I love DCS and I try to spend money with ED as much as possible. I've spent a couple hundred this year, and it's been worth every penny. These guys deserve to be financially successful, no doubt.

 

Please realize that it has nothing to do with ED when I say that I hate, loathe, abhor, and regurgitate at the word "subscription".

 

You're talking to a population, at least some of us (I can't speak for everyone), that comes "pre-abused" by this wretched bandwagon-jumping bastard child birthed by the unholy bastions of evil that are Adobe, Apple, and Sploogle.

 

Probably 70% of applications that I paid for, in full, have gone subscription, some literally months after I purchased them. To be fair, it's not like I got nothing for them transitioning, for I got the company's collective middle-fingers shoved directly up my ... it's not important.

 

And how many of the supposed benefits that subscriptions were supposed to bring, actually materialized? For the consumer, not many. If anything they are even buggier and less supported than they were before I started renting them instead of owning them.

 

In fact, I hereby propose replacing the term "F**k You" with "Subscription" since they more or less mean the same thing in the 2020 USA.

 

Bottom line, I love ED, and would be glad to buy more modules and show my support by spending more, but I would rather light my scrotum on fire and be given a bottle of kerosene to put it out than rent even more of my software.

 

I've cancelled most of the other things that went subscription and learned to live without them. I couldn't do that with DCS, and would be forced to pay it if you ended up going this way, but I'd be an even more bitter, more angry person than I am now.

 

Assuming that's possible.

Edited June 12, 2020 by Rex

[Tom Kazansky]

I don't like subscription models.

 

 

But could we see it this way:

 

 

I like owning a car. But others like leasing it and others rent a car from time to time.

 

 

No one of each group wants to eliminate any of the other groups bc those models help the company to build better cars.

 

 

Could a software company do the same?

[Vertigo72]

No one of each group wants to eliminate any of the other groups bc those models help the company to build better cars.

 

No no no no. I paid over 40K for my car, its completely unfair if my neighbor gets to lease that car for 600 per month. And doesnt have to pay maintenance. And he can regularly switch cars. Its unfair to me and it will bankrupt car manufacturers, I also expect them to keep improving my car instead of developing new cars for my neighbor. And they will because otherwise I will write angry posts on fora and point to polls that prove that car owners do not want to pay lease fees.

[Northstar98]

MOHAB said:

Well... since it's an additional income, I guess it's gonna make a big difference. 5 Dollars times let's say 50.000 players who would go for that kind of model we're talking a quarter million dollars GOP. I guess that is not to far off, given the fact that lock on sold about 50k units in the US alone by 2005.

I guess you could do a lot with that amount of money.

Okay, $5 for 50000 people nets you $250,000, but so does selling a $50 module to 5000 people...

Which sounds more likely? Given that the number of active players usually is around 1000 people. Now this is just at any one time so maybe it isn't representative of the total userbase.

But that's okay we have a different metric - the number of forum users, which is about 90000 - lets assume that only half actively play DCS (seems reasonable enough) and we've got our 50,000 users.

Problem is, if this poll is anything to go by, 80% do not want a subscription, now obviously, it's not representative of the entire user base, but it's all we have to go on. So 80%, that gets rid of 40,000 people, leaving us with 10,000... Not looking good.

If it was optional you've still got to think of some way to incentivise the 80%, I''m not sure promises and "we hope to do this" will cut it. You're idea was to use it as a paywall to things like Vulkan, which okay, but I still don't think it'll fly well.

Fair enough, the cost of development is not 0, and a paywall maybe necessary - that's fine, but make it a 1-time purchase, exactly like BS2 and BS3, and hope that everything stays compatible.

Edited December 11, 2021 by Northstar98
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[Vertigo72]

Problem is, 80% do not want a subscription, so if it was optional you've got to think of some way to incentivise the 80%. You're idea was to use it as a paywall to things like Vulkan.

 

What is more important; finding an incentive to onboard existing customers to a scheme they dont want and piss them off with paywalls, or having a scheme that is attractive to new customers or existing customers with a limited number of modules who are currently unwilling/unable to pay full module price upfront for the ones they dont have? (or ED doesnt really have :D)

 

Fair enough, the cost of development is not 0, and a paywall maybe necessary - that's fine, but make it a 1-time purchase, exactly like BS2 and BS3, and hope that everything stays compatible.

 

Which is one of many reasons I really would not like to see different versions. That will be a nightmare to maintain, it will split the community, and its of no benefit to anyone to have a user base that is split between various versions.

[Northstar98]

Vertigo72 said:

What is more important; finding an incentive to onboard existing customers to a scheme they dont want and piss them off with paywalls, or having a scheme that is attractive to new customers or existing customers with a limited number of modules who are currently unwilling/unable to pay full module price upfront for the ones they dont have? (or ED doesnt really have :D)

Subscriptions are attractive to new customers now?

Vertigo72 said:

Which is one of many reasons I really would not like to see different versions. That will be a nightmare to maintain, it will split the community, and its of no benefit to anyone to have a user base that is split between various versions.

You realise that basically every subscription proposed on here will do exactly this? To potentially even greater extent.

Edited December 11, 2021 by Northstar98
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[Vertigo72]

Subscriptions are attractive to new customers now?

 

They could be. I wouldnt mind renting all the WW2 stuff for a while. See if I like it.Check performance on channel map. See how online goes. But Im not considering going all in and spending 200 euro upfront.

 

Also if there is a subscription model that gives me access to all the planes, and all the maps, I would definately consider it. Price of that subscription should be dependent on how many modules I dont own yet.

 

edit: misread. Thought you said existing customers. But the same is very much true for completely new customers, who may not know what plane suits them. And fear getting buyers remorse if it turns out the F14 is too difficult, or the viggen isnt really their thing, and they would have preferred an F18 or FW190 instead.

 

You realise that basically every subscription model on here will do exactly this?

 

I guess you are talking about a subscription version of DCSW then? Which indeed would pose that problem, as many users would stick to 2.5. Same problem if you charge a fixed fee for DCSW 3.0. Its why I dont think its a good idea.

 

My suggestion is to offer subscriptions (or because people are allergic to that word, maybe "renting" ) of modules instead.

Edited June 12, 2020 by Vertigo72

[amalahama]

Hey MOHAB, Vertigo72, if you are so willing to pay mothly I can pass you my bank account so everybody's happy :D

[Northstar98]

Vertigo72 said:

I guess you are talking about a subscription version of DCSW then? Which indeed would pose that problem, as many users would stick to 2.5. Same problem if you charge a fixed fee for DCSW 3.0. Its why I dont think its a good idea.

I was, and so glad you agree.

The thing is I thought that the whole point of subscriptions was to get more direct funding to the core.

Vertigo72 said:

My suggestion is to offer subscriptions (or because people are allergic to that word, maybe "renting" ) of modules instead.

Oh, as one of the younger ones on this forum, so I'm pretty allergic to that word too.

But as for charging subscriptions for modules instead, I'm kinda lost on that one, too tired.

Edited December 11, 2021 by Northstar98
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[Vertigo72]

Hey MOHAB, Vertigo72, if you are so willing to pay mothly I can pass you my bank account so everybody's happy :D

 

If you prefer paying fixed amounts upfront for stuff that doesnt work yet, and may never get fixed, Ill give you mine. What do you want, a B17? No problem, Just send me the money and Ill give you a serial. No promises when Ill release it. Be patient. And I may have to break your entire game to enable it. Payment via Western union of course, I dont want you to be able to do a charge back if I dont deliver this decade, or decide to start selling B52s instead. Anyone want a B52? Ah screw the B52. lets do a WW2 carrier. No one ever asked for it, but its the only thing I can think off. Who wants a serial for a WW2 carrier? What do you say? You want new clouds? Bug fixes? Dynamic campaigns ? Performance upgrades? Sorry, no can do. I dont sell those. Ask nVidia. You want Vulkan ? I can do the Avro Vulcan if you want. Just send me the money!

[Vertigo72]

The thing is I thought that the whole point of subscriptions was to get more direct funding to the core.

 

It does that, regardless of what ED actually charges the subscription fee for. They could charge a monthly fee for DCSW or module packs or online playing or having customised 3d pilot models that look like you. Money is money. But what changes is the fact that periodic subscriptions shift revenue away from selling new modules, meaning ED do not HAVE to release new module after new module to pay their salaries. Instead their revenue will depend at least partially on maintaining happy customer willing to renew their subscription every month. Customer who right now may not care for yet another new plane or another ship, but do care about performance or clouds or bugs in old modules or whatever.

 

That is the real change.

[amalahama]

If you prefer paying fixed amounts upfront for stuff that doesnt work yet, and may never get fixed, Ill give you mine. What do you want, a B17? No problem, Just send me the money and Ill give you a serial. No promises when Ill release it. Be patient. And I may have to break your entire game to enable it. Payment via Western union of course, I dont want you to be able to do a charge back if I dont deliver this decade, or decide to start selling B52s instead. Anyone want a B52? Ah screw the B52. lets do a WW2 carrier. No one ever asked for it, but its the only thing I can think off. Who wants a serial for a WW2 carrier? What do you say? You want new clouds? Bug fixes? Dynamic campaigns ? Performance upgrades? Sorry, no can do. I dont sell those. Ask nVidia. You want Vulkan ? I can do the Avro Vulcan if you want. Just send me the money!

 

Just a reminder: paying monthly doesn't mean you will get all the bugs fixed sooner. Example: Star Citizen

[Furiz]

Only game that managed to efficiently pull off the subscription based model is World of Warcraft with millions of players, since this is not played by millions it just wouldn't work, there were many other game developers that failed with the sub based model,

 

 

 

What WoW managed to do and others couldn't copy is they made the game addictive and yet very interesting, later on they started losing player base due to the fact that the game became more of a grind fest rather than an interesting adventure but they still managed to keep the large amount of subscriptions,

 

 

Since this is nowhere near the game type of WoW, I don't think it would be very successful with subscription model.

[Vertigo72]

Just a reminder: paying monthly doesn't mean you will get all the bugs fixed sooner. Example: Star Citizen

 

what? AFAIK you dont need even need to pay a sub for star citizen. They sell modules and ships. Some for $2000. If you buy all the ships in the game, its a cool $36000. Im not surprised they spend more time developing ever more ships than fixing bugs! I mean look at it:

 

https://starcitizen.tools/List_of_Ship_and_Vehicle_Prices

 

Thats EDs business model on steroids. But yeah, good point I guess?

[Vertigo72]

Only game that managed to efficiently pull off the subscription based model is World of Warcraft

 

Eve Online is the first one that comes to my mind. I bet there are countless others. I also believe FS2020 will be at least partially subscription based, and if you think it will not be successful because that, Im taking bets.

 

On a more general note; xbox gamepass, geforce now, google stadia, everything is moving towards a netflix model for games. How many DVDs did you buy this year?

[MAXsenna]

Eve Online is the first one that comes to my mind. I bet there are countless others. I also believe FS2020 will be at least partially subscription based, and if you think it will not be successful because that, Im taking bets.

 

 

 

On a more general note; xbox gamepass, geforce now, google stadia, everything is moving towards a netflix model for games. How many DVDs did you buy this year?

None. But I ain't no Netflix or other for that matter. Oh, wait! I have Spotify. Comes with the as for software. I NEVER get software I can't use perpetually. But I am willing to pay some more for DCS. Not a subscription, but a fare maintenence fee, IF there will be less bugs after updates, and upgrades and new promised features are released on time.

 

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[Tom Kazansky]

If I wanted to watch a certain DVD whenever and how often I want to I would buy it. Same with DCS modules.

[Vertigo72]

I NEVER get software I can't use perpetually.

 

Thats your choice. And I dont want to take that away. But you better get used to the idea, because the world is moving to SaaS. Good luck using fusion360 or pretty much any autodesk program. Or adobe program. And increasingly Microsoft programs. Google doesnt even sell any apps, its all SaaS.

 

btw, how old is your antivirus program?

 

But I am willing to pay some more for DCS. Not a subscription, but a fare maintenence fee,

 

You mean like a recurring monthly maintenance fee? In practice that is almost same, but its not the worst idea I heard. Problem there is that you could hardly offer it as an option or in parallel to the current pricing model. It would be mandatory for everyone - at the very least for anyone flying online and be an extra cost, even for anyone who purchased all the current modules. It would also mark the end of the free version of DCSW, and I dont think thats a good idea.

 

But if the anti sub crowd for some reasons prefers to pay basically mandatory monthly maintenance fees instead of giving other people the option to rent their modules, I wouldnt be against that. But Ill let you explain to them why they should pay for bug fixes in the modules they paid full price for.

[ST0RM]

How about you drop this? The numbers show its not a popular idea. So stop trying to push it.

[Northstar98]

Vertigo72 said:

Thats your choice. And I dont want to take that away. But you better get used to the idea, because the world is moving to SaaS. Good luck using fusion360 or pretty much any autodesk program. Or adobe program. And increasingly Microsoft programs. Google doesnt even sell any apps, its all SaaS.

This is not a good thing.

Question, with all of these subscriptions, has there been a marked improvement in quality, bug fixing etc? Or are they going subscription for another reason?

Let's just dig something up.

Lunatic98 said:

Let me tell you a story of AutoDesk 3DS Max. There once was a time where you could buy an expensive, perpetual license, which in today's money equated to a little over $4000. This was a one time fee, that bought you that specific version, for you to use, forever. It was very powerful software, that worked and was used the world over, and probably did exactly what you wanted it to do. And that extra features and access to more upgrades you could forsake, for getting a license that you could theoretically use forever.

A few years ago though, they dropped perpetual licenses, switching to only allow subscriptions. These subscriptions now cost $205 monthly, $1620 yearly or $4375 for 5-years, as we can see if you wanted the software for more than 4 years, you would've been better off with the perpetual, provided you can do away with extra features in new versions.

So lets see what we have, lets say you want the software for 5 years, and you're willing to forsake features provided by the subscription.

• For perpetual you have $4010
• Paying monthly, that's $9840. Already more than double
• Paying yearly that's $8100. Again, over double.
• Paying for the 5 years $4375, more reasonable but still over $300 more expensive, and you still have to pay a large amount.

And this is only over 5 years. Lets try over 10 years; paying the 5 year rate twice would be double the perpetual. For software that essentially, does the same thing. And after that 10 years, you'd have to keep on paying just to use the thing you already have. Sure, subscriptions come with upgrades (which in some cases raises the price), full-time support packages, cloud storage. But having a quick look, it seems that many new features people either don't want or aren't that interested in, but they have no choice other than to pay the subscription, which after 5 years, becomes way more expensive than the software you got with a perpetual license, and only gets more and more expensive as time goes on.

It's a similar story with Adobe.

I don't know, from my experience subscription anything (with only a few exceptions such as Netflix) is just a super simple way of making a lot more money on a more regular basis, while selling pretty much the exact same thing. I mean with the Autodesk 3DS Max example it's literally, hey you purchased software 4 years ago, mind paying full price for it again? Cheers, see you in 4 years time!

Edited December 11, 2021 by Northstar98
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[MAXsenna]

Thats your choice. And I dont want to take that away. But you better get used to the idea, because the world is moving to SaaS. Good luck using fusion360 or pretty much any autodesk program. Or adobe program. And increasingly Microsoft programs. Google doesnt even sell any apps, its all SaaS.

 

btw, how old is your antivirus program?

 

 

 

You mean like a recurring monthly maintenance fee? In practice that is almost same, but its not the worst idea I heard. Problem there is that you could hardly offer it as an option or in parallel to the current pricing model. It would be mandatory for everyone - at the very least for anyone flying online and be an extra cost, even for anyone who purchased all the current modules. It would also mark the end of the free version of DCSW, and I dont think thats a good idea.

 

But if the anti sub crowd for some reasons prefers to pay basically mandatory monthly maintenance fees instead of giving other people the option to rent their modules, I wouldnt be against that. But Ill let you explain to them why they should pay for bug fixes in the modules they paid full price for.

 

I'm an IT Admin. Got everything MS as enterprise. SaaS. Nice old buzzword.

No need to pay for AV if you ain't stoopid.

Can't Adobe still be pirated? Moved on to open source anyway.

Jokes aside. Will try to answer you. But as you already knew, before this discussion, people will just not agree, and there is no "every one's a winner" solution. But might be a middle way.

In Oil&Gas. One concurrent geo locked lisence cost about 100K USD, for the core lisence. To make estimated guesses for where you might find anything. (That's basically all the software does). But. The licenses are perpetual. To get upgrades new features etc. You pay maintenance. (But bug fixes to already included features are free). 20% Too much for DCS, I know. And it's NOT mandatory! That's the point. If you're happy with the current release, and don't need new features, stick with what you got.

But let's say. They announce DCS 3.0 in 2021. Completely rewritten, not free. Vulkan and Multi Threading included. All purchased modules from 2.x are transferable. 2022, dynamic campaign, 2023 something else. To get announced features you pay maintence. Not a large sum like 20% 2.x core would still be free. Then the free version will lag behind release with like 5 years or so. Because we need new players. So something needs to be free. You can jump off maintence any time. But then you're only entitled to version you paid for. You get my point? And you can jump back anytime, but then you must pay for the "time" you didn't. But after 5 years it's even, if you get me.

One issue today. Is that 3rd party suffers even more than ED. Because they are demanded to fix things for free after every update when ED breaks it. So, this model could be expanded to third parties as well. But not you own like 30 modules. But let's cap it at 10 or something. So I see like 50 bucks a year in maintence. Not more. I could probably go to 100, but that's me.

I love DCS, and I know ED's doing their best. Nobody can work for free. I totally agree with you there.

My idea is probably not realistic at all. Just wanted to throw something in there.

Apologies for lack of spelling and missing words. I'm on a train, having my own vorspiel going to a friend.

Cheers!

 

 

 

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