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Ask HN: How tired are you of subscription services?

3 points by calflegal ↗ HN
I'm thinking if shipping some little web music games. If I were ever to monetize it, should I go with free to play and one-time purchases or should I try to pursue some subscription model?

At this point I personally feel tired of everybody wanting some number of bucks per month, though I get that it aligns business costs with customer payments. How do you feel about this issue and what would you do in the case of this project?

10 comments

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bigbuppo
If you are ethical, moral, and otherwise decent, do a one-time purchase. Otherwise, extract every last cent of revenue you can using the scummiest of subscription mechanisms you can muster combined with advertising.
PaulHoule
Not very tired, at least when it comes to "useful" software; I'm about to subscribe to Plex Pass because I want the DVR support (I have a HD Homerun.)

I haven't subscribed to play a game for a long time and expect never to do so. I solidly reject GAME PASS from Microsoft but I am a Meta Quest + subscriber although I'm not sure I play enough VR and haven't been impressed with the quality of the games on it lately.

bhaney
> I'm about to subscribe to Plex Pass because I want the DVR support (I have a HD Homerun.)

Jellyfin supports that out of the box for free, just like hardware transcoding which is also paywalled on Plex.

PaulHoule
I replaced Plex with Jellyfin because I hated Plex promoting an (then) unwanted FAST service [1]. Jellyfin was a struggle every day, particularly the XBOX ONE client "just didn't work" despite several attempts on their part. Watching movies and TV with my family was a constant humiliation. [2]

Last summer I was gentling a feral cat at the other house and once I set up a microwave link I watched a lot of Tubi over there and it didn't seem to be fair to still be angry at Plex. My home server had a /boot partition that was too small which meant I couldn't really apply software updates anymore so I rebuilt the machine and figured I'd switch to Plex which "just works" in every way except my M4 Mac Mini doesn't realize my Plex server is on the same network as it. At $5 a month they ought to take my trouble tickets seriously.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_ad-supported_streaming_te...

[2] Sure "XBOX ONE Sux", I shoulda got a PS4 because I'm a weeaboo, but I have the thing and the hardware ought to be perfectly adequate

bhaney
That's fair. If the client for your media server sucks on one of your preferred platforms, that's a death sentence. Jellyfin's Xbox One client switched a few months ago to using a Chromium-based web view instead of a legacy EdgeHTML-based one, so that might fix a lot of the problems you had with it, if you ever want to give it another shot. Keep in mind you can install both Plex and Jellyfin on the same server pointed at the same media library if you want.
JohnFen
I don't do subscriptions, personally, and especially not for games.
not_your_vase
Subscriptions are fine as long as I get continuously my money's worth.
wryoak
Subscriptions are fine if you keep delivering new content
stop50
I limit myself to a few subs, which i check every few months.

Otherwise i would be broke, since only a portion of the series i watch are available on a subscription.

Plus i avoid amazon because of reasons.