User Pay-ware

[Frostiken]

I wouldn't worry too much about being charged an arm and a leg for too many things though. ED is only offering the opportunity, they aren't setting prices, or welcoming/encouraging people to stamp price tags on their stuff, right?

 

At the same time, if you look around the App Store, you'll find people's home-grown apps that do minor things but still have strangely outrageous prices on them. I think the fact is that the huge majority of people have never gone to business school and don't understand the proper value of something, thusly I'm more inclined to think that when you can set your own prices in the wonky world of digital economics, you're more than likely going to overvalue your own work, think you're worth more than you really are, and end up charging $30 for an iPad version of Helios.

 

If something isn't worth paying for, like a campaign for example, simply do not buy it. I agree, the community is small, and we all benefit from people helping out.

It would be nice if economics weren't a joke on the internet though. In the real world, if I make some knick-knacks and charge a fortune for them, 90% of people might not buy it because it's expensive, but 10% of people might because they have too much money, they're daft, whatever. In order to stop from going out of business (since I wouldn't be able to survive only selling 10% of my stock), I'd be forced to drop prices - that's how competition works.

 

With digital content, there's no overhead (certainly not now that you can host payware on ED's site :D), there's no business to manage, no investors to pay, no inventory to move, no manufacturing costs... and you can't charge for a mission that doesn't already exist, so you've already spent time (the only expense that there is in making missions).

 

So while myself, or 90% of the rest of people might see a $30 pricetag on a campaign and scoff, we might still want to play the campaign but not be willing to pay that ridiculous fee for it... there's no reason to ever drop the price and it probably never will go down, which means we can never play the campaign unless we fork out for it or, well let's be honest this is the internet - commit mild copyright infringement.

 

If you think about it though, people could have been charging for their content all along. This is only a change to the DCS website AFAIK.

Maybe, maybe not - the EULA actually forbids using missions and campaigns for commercial gain, so I imagine it's not been more popular mostly because it's technically not been allowed, or people just expect user-generated content to simply be free. This small change shows that ED isn't just turning a blind eye to monetization of UGC, but they're now encouraging it. I think that will be the big change...

 

 

 

PS: Complaints about the economics / payware are more a general observation about DLC in general too. Interestingly, I don't think anyone else has ever noticed that while the price of an actual game will go down over time, the price of DLC never does. The reason the price of games drops, even on Steam, is because they want prices to remain stable across all distribution platforms, and they lower the price of new games in brick-and-mortar stores to move excess inventory or to remain competitive with the secondhand market. But DLC doesn't have a secondhand market, nor does it have inventory to move, so you'll notice that you can find games years and years old that have lost 80% of their value, but still charge the same price for DLC as the day it came out.

Edited February 8, 2012 by Frostiken

[636_Castle]

Ah..well gents it appears I have been schooled. :) Nothing to see here.

[cichlidfan]

2. Why don't we have a system and culture in place to reward those who spend time working on missions or other content for free? "I like missions made by X, therefore I am going to give X some money in appreciation." That would be one hell of a way to to encourage people to continue working for free.

 

Isn't that what 'donation-ware' (i.e. Helios and Hawg Touch among others) is already?

[Grimes]

Isn't that what 'donation-ware' (i.e. Helios and Hawg Touch among others) is already?

 

Dont use either of those, but I was thinking more toward missions as that is what the debate is currently focused on.

[Frostiken]

Advantages of donation-ware from the consumer's point of view is that:

 

1) Life is easier. I don't have to fiddle with (in the case of the payware that's on the site already) registering on another website, installing a suspicious bit of software, sending money to some random goons in Canada, wait for registration to unlock in a week, then plug my serial key in. Usually it's just pay via PayPal, done.

 

2) Anyone and everyone else is a better judge of your work than you yourself are, and thus the user can decide how much value they've gotten out of it. If your mission is overpriced, I won't buy it and that will be the end of it - you'll probably never see my money. Donationware means everyone is a potential customer.

 

3) I don't feel ripped off if I download your mission and it's a buggy mess that's totally incompatible with the latest version, and you've since stopped making missions or supporting them altogether.

 

The only real advantage to be had from donation-ware from a production standpoint is that it lets you earn money without introducing the three cons above, and without pissing off angry old men like me who are just too old-school into modding where EVERYTHING was free :D

[BlueRidgeDx]

What a waste of electrons.

 

If you don't like it, vote with your wallet and don't buy it. That's how capitalism works...there is no such thing as the "correct value" for a service or product. The value is whatever the market decides it is.

 

There's nothing stopping talented developers from producing freeware products, so why the backlash? The truth is, if one can make some revenue off of their effort, they are willing to invest more time and effort on future products, usually resulting in an increase in quality. How is that bad for the community?

 

Try looking at the 3rd party addon ecosystem surrounding the MSFS franchise (Flight excluded), and tell me that it's "moronic" to spend more money on an addon than the base product. Or that the community somehow suffers as a result of payware addons.

 

I think it was said somewhere in that diatribe that "one person's idea of value is worthless", and I couldn't agree more. :rolleyes

[BlueRidgeDx]

"Mild copyright infringement"?

 

You mean steal someone else's work because you have no self control and a deferred moral compass?

 

Nice, dude.

[Rainbowed]

One guy made an iPad app (iWarthog) for free. And another guy made a huge program to export and display all kinds of instruments whereever you want (Helios), for free. Then some clown comes along, steals both ideas, combined them into his own iPad app, and charged $30 for it. Who does that help? Is his product worth 30x as much as Helios? Are you saying the other two programs were *not* high quality, because they didn't cost money?

 

Agree with you on that one. That's kinda of the "bad way" this whole thing could go. However, lets be rational, for pay-wares, something good may also come up. I would be pleased to pay for new maps/new aircrafts as Phantom88 mentioned. Decision's been made by ED and honestly, I dont think ED's gonna change this descision easily. So, Im just gonna sit here and see how this thing goes.

[sorcer3r]

I'd pay a fortune for a copy that is stable, makes maximum use of cores and doesn't crash in either worldgeneral.dll, effects.dll, transport.dll or async.dll, (which incidentally, were the same problems from beta 1), a riddence of the Master Server list system and reliable and stable mp packets. Infact, i'd bet most of us would pay a fortune for it. keep waiting though.

 

:thumbup:

 

just to make this ontopic. And of course we would pay for a 3rd party dedicated server version. ;)

[Headspace]

TARS is free. But, I accept donations. So far a singificant percentage of people who use it have not donated. Which is expected; I am not using these donations to feed myself (although they did in fact get put toward additional hardware to perform unit testing with, which was nice).

 

If TARS ever does get turned into payware it will be under the following circumstances: 1) I am forced to out of necessity and 2) People who donated would have the amount that they donated used as credit.

[kylania]

No thank you.

 

Depending on how this goes it very much could affect my purchasing from ED themselves. DCS works really well as a community which shares and helps each other for the benefit of everyone. I'm not sure I'll enjoy it if it turns into nothing more than a customer trough.

[spikenet]

I know we are re-hashing the "maple flag" thread in here but I have changed my opinion on the value of payware.

 

Yes, I supported the BFT camagne and thought it was a great idea. I started using it and found many issues and that led to frustration. The support was there initially but appears to have dried up. I guess to be expected for $5.. So my poor experience has left me a bit burnt and I doubt I will cough up anytime soon for anything else.

With any software, I hate fixing other peoples bugs.. I do it at work all day so I'm not about to pay for an add-on that I need to tweek to work!

 

I like the paradigm of Headspace, donateware, if its good, honest people will donate, if its crap they wont. At least that way he has not alienated the community and he gets beta testers gladly helping him out :)

[Nate--IRL--]

Why the big issue now? 3rd party Pay-ware for DCS has been around for years. 3rd party Pay-ware has been common in sims such as Falcon 4 and FSX for years and has yielded very positive results for those sims.

 

Again the Market will dictate if a product is worth paying for. If it is substandard it won't sell - if something is exceptional, and sells, it may prompt more development of exceptional products.

 

If we even got a fraction of the Free-ware/pay-ware developer interest that FSX has built up, we would be very grateful as a community. Would anybody complain if a 3rd party Developers such as A2A started selling aircraft for DCS?

 

Nate

[BrumTx]

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Edited February 10, 2012 by BrumTx

[Nate--IRL--]

I think ED have made a very bad decision to allow Pay-ware.

Nothing else to say, because if I do I 'll be banned from the forum

 

Allow payware? It has been allowed for years.

 

Nate

[Snoopy]

TARS is free. But, I accept donations. So far a singificant percentage of people who use it have not donated. Which is expected; I am not using these donations to feed myself (although they did in fact get put toward additional hardware to perform unit testing with, which was nice).

 

If TARS ever does get turned into payware it will be under the following circumstances: 1) I am forced to out of necessity and 2) People who donated would have the amount that they donated used as credit.

 

Good reminder...I haven't donated in a while need to send a few dollars your way!

[BrumTx]

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Edited February 10, 2012 by BrumTx

[Wichid]

If it adds value to the platform don't fight it. If it doesn't, don't buy it.

[Nate--IRL--]

Yes I suppose it has if you mean the additional FC and then DCS additions and for some they will have to pay for the Nevada addon.

 

No not at all, I'm not talking about 1st party pay-ware (From ED)- This is about 3rd party pay ware, and that has been allowed for years. The first successful one I remember was the VERGEEV Group campaign for BS1.

 

If it adds value to the platform don't fight it. If it doesn't, don't buy it.

 

Quoted for truth.

 

Nate

Edited February 8, 2012 by Nate--IRL--

[BrumTx]

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Edited February 10, 2012 by BrumTx

[cichlidfan]

I know we are re-hashing the "maple flag" thread in here but I have changed my opinion on the value of payware.

 

Yes, I supported the BFT camagne and thought it was a great idea. I started using it and found many issues and that led to frustration. The support was there initially but appears to have dried up. I guess to be expected for $5..

 

Quoted because it's the most interesting thing posted in this thread!

[Scooternutz]

Nice move DCS! Nice to see you join the ranks of ROF and FSX.

[galagamo]

I'll never ever pay for a 3rd party campaign, mission, or basically anything whipped up in the ME no matter how intricate it is.

 

I hope the guys that are going for payware actually realize when they charge for they're work that they will be held to a completely different standard.

I do not want to see the "paid" section getting spammed with crap that I could do myself if I were so inclined, even though I dont have to buy it, it could get rather annoying.

Think Grandsurfs airbase mod, Bescl's MIG21, combatace's SU33, Ricardo's HDpits ect, ect, I'd buy that sort of content at a reasonable price for sure.

Also I never even knew DCS had 3rd party payware content except those training videos which aren't addons anyways;

learn something new every day.

Edited February 8, 2012 by galagamo

[joey45]

I'm a bit hit and miss on this one.

[Deadman]

Well said want to give rep but the system says no

If it adds value to the platform don't fight it. If it doesn't, don't buy it.