At last, true words. A subscription based economy is ultimately unsustainable. Too many subs chasing too few subscribers with too little cash. Eventually it will crash and burn, and already there's pushback coming from users (e.g. the Adobe extortion). The best way to ensure devs get revenue to keep developing and users get value, is to push the subscription up into the Premium product range, which looks like it's starting to get traction in A.I. software at least.
I absolutely despise the fact that they try to add subscriptions to every damn thing.
I wish more people understood this and would actually refuse to purchase.
"Consumers can vote with our dollars. Consumer backlash has already affected the rollout of some subscription schemes. Refuse to purchase these products, and join with others who are rejecting these developments."
There's nothing wrong with subscriptions, if they pay for a service whose upkeep requires ongoing effort. Like internet providers, or online game servers.
That does not apply to products which are (essentially) a fixed-feature product. Like most productivity software, single-player games & so on. Tying subscription fees to those should indeed be met with a firm "NO!".
And no, bugfixes don't count as ongoing service (imho). That's more like repair under warranty: fixing issues that shouldn't have been there in the 1st place.
even online game servers can be questionable- like starcraft2 and diablo3(and 4) requiring them when they would be perfectly fine to play on lan only without any online servers like diablo2 and sc1
Or the many FPS games, basically all of them, that now require online servers ran by the company rather than letting users run their own the way all fps games used to. (and a dishonorable mention to the subset of CoD games that let you 'run your own server' but only by paying them to spin up another game server in their existing data centers)
The answer to the subscription model is not to partake of it.
Companies can choose to go with the subscription model or go without sales. In 2019, BMW began charging users a subscription fee to use Apple CarPlay (though this was scrapped later that year).
Customers can use previous non-subscription models, or buy from companies that don't use the subscription mode of business.
Business routes around constrictive companies. Ferinstance: Don't like Apple's business practices? Buy a (probably better and cheaper) phone from Huawei instead.
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[ 2.5 ms ] story [ 24.9 ms ] threadI wish more people understood this and would actually refuse to purchase.
"Consumers can vote with our dollars. Consumer backlash has already affected the rollout of some subscription schemes. Refuse to purchase these products, and join with others who are rejecting these developments."
That does not apply to products which are (essentially) a fixed-feature product. Like most productivity software, single-player games & so on. Tying subscription fees to those should indeed be met with a firm "NO!".
And no, bugfixes don't count as ongoing service (imho). That's more like repair under warranty: fixing issues that shouldn't have been there in the 1st place.
Or the many FPS games, basically all of them, that now require online servers ran by the company rather than letting users run their own the way all fps games used to. (and a dishonorable mention to the subset of CoD games that let you 'run your own server' but only by paying them to spin up another game server in their existing data centers)
Companies can choose to go with the subscription model or go without sales. In 2019, BMW began charging users a subscription fee to use Apple CarPlay (though this was scrapped later that year).
Customers can use previous non-subscription models, or buy from companies that don't use the subscription mode of business.
Business routes around constrictive companies. Ferinstance: Don't like Apple's business practices? Buy a (probably better and cheaper) phone from Huawei instead.