Currently most add-on builders run on a upfront payment model where you pay say $30 and get the add-on for life. We then depend on them to keep issuing updates for that add-on over the coming years. If it turns out you don’t like the add-on for whatever reason then that’s tough luck thanks for the payment. Similarly if the dev doesn’t live up to the promises of future support, you’ve already paid upfront for the aircraft.
From the dev side it’s not all sunshine either because they’re under pressure to keep supporting the add-on to keep the customers happy but also they want to keep producing new add-ons that will raise fresh revenue so they can pay for their staff.
That’s why I think a subscription model would work out much better both for the customer as well as for the devs. You’d simply pay, say $3 per month for an aircraft mod and if it isn’t supported the way you want you just stop your subscription. On the other hand the dev is continuously compensated for keeping the add-on up to date and supported.
I think the sim should figure out how to support a subscription model as currently this would be tricky to enforce (once you’ve got the add-on in your library how does the dev make you uninstall it if you stop paying the monthly?). With the in-sim marketplace this should be doable I think, but perhaps it can also be doable for off-marketplace items with some sort of a cryptographic solution.
No ,just no, you’d end up paying way more over time , imagine buying a £30 aircraft for msfs at the start, 4 years later with your subscription method you’d be paying £144
Subscription based models are only good for the one that gets the money, not for the one who pays. And they can also discontinue support at some point or release useless updates just to keep subscription alive. At the end of the day you will always pay more than with a one time payment.
Not necessarily. Think how many aircraft you buy that you don’t end up flying a lot. I’ve probably spent $500 on various add-ons. If you end up flying a specific aircraft a lot and keep it for 3 years you’d pay $90 for that aircraft which is 3x more than you’d pay now, but for all those you don’t like you might only pay $3 vs $30 now which is 10x less. In other words you’d end up paying more to continue maintaining aircraft that you like but you’d spend less on those that you bought but didn’t really like that much.
There might be some model like this that could work. Allowing someone to end their subscription without penalty would limit the risk to the consumer.
I’m not a huge fan of subscription models for games in general, but I do subscribe to Navigraph (and a few online news sources) so I have obviously found some things that are worth it to me.
I would probably try a subscription model like this for expensive or complex aircraft like the PMDG to see if I actually like them or not. There isn’t currently a good try-before-you-buy option.
Right now, I get hit with XBox GamePass fees, Paystation fees, Disney+, Paramount+, Hulu, the list goes on.
Already it is a pain to manage all those subscriptions. I have probably over 2000 addons I have purchased. I can’t imagine having to keep track of 2000 subscriptions. And $3 a month? That would be $6000 a month in subscription fees. It also doesn’t help the developer at all with maintenance costs. People will unsubscribe to a mod, go months without paying, and then if they find out there are updates they want, they subscribe for one month to get the new update.
Basically, while it is being described as how beneificial it is to everyone, it really hoses over the developer. I’m assuming that instead of $30, you pay only $3 at first to get an addon. And when you really want an update, you pay another $3 and unsubsribe again. Its a cheap way to get addons for consumers, but inheritantly, it would be less money for developers.
There was a not-dissimilar topic about 6 months ago on ‘renting’ airports rather than buying them outright, and the reception to any idea of an ongoing payment was generally pretty hostile. I think subscription works well for some kinds of product, where the product otherwise would be very expensive to purchase outright, but many people are opposed to subscriptions for software in principle.
I’m personally on the fence. For example, I subscribe to Adobe Creative Suite and I wouldn’t buy all the apps for that outright since I use most of them only occasionally, but equally I’m paying a lot for the subscription every year and for that price I could probably have bought half of the products in the subscription outright. It’s the combination of the base product cost + the cost of upgrades that ultimately make me OK to do this (well, and that Adobe basically doesn’t do upfront licenses any more).
I don’t think that model applies to aircraft or airports or other such add-ons. If the developers are adding enough new value to the product over time to make it worthwhile, they can offer upgrade pricing for existing users. There is a way to do this on the Marketplace now, I believe.
Few if any flight sim addons are at the cost level where I would balk at paying up-front if I wanted it. Try-before-you-buy is a different thing, but difficult to do unless there was a built-in mechanism in the sim to do it.
100% no to this idea. The average consumer is being hit with so many subscription fees as it is. Let’s not ruin this hobby. People are not made of money and consumers should not be treated as cash cows with infinitely deep pockets. I would never purchase an addon with a subscription fee. I have purchased over 200 aircraft alone for MSFS. The subscription fees I’d be paying monthly to “maintain” those would be absurd (by your outrageous $3/month per addon example, that’d be over $600/month in subscription fees) and developers would absolutely sell less addons as a result of this approach. There’s a reason this has never been tried.
If the developer wants more out of new releases or version 2 releases etc, it’s in their interest to maintain any major issues to their release. If they do not, then people will not buy the next version or next product knowing how poor their ongoing support is.
This wouldn’t work without some way for a developer to deactivate a plane.
What if someone buys a $3 subscription, cancels it, and keeps flying the plane?
The only way to stop that thievery would be to have some sort of 2-way telemetry from the user’s computer to the developer so the dev can check subscription status. Not my cup of tea, and having that sort of thing would stop me from buying the addon that uses it.
I think a much better idea is to have a trial period. It’s not that hard to implement an ‘auto-destruct’ if an unlock code isn’t paid for and used after the trial period runs out. Other software does this all the time. And I guarantee you their code is locked down. Are there people who can break the lock? Sure. But the VAST majority (including myself) have neither the skill nor the desire to steal 3rd Party addons.
I bought 1 MSFS add on and was promised endeless updates.
What they didnt tell was that. after 2 updates, they just started the same add on but then a version 2 and stopped updating V1. I will never ever but from that publisher again.
Let´s be a bit rational here. Nobody will offer a subscription for 3$ so that you can use the full product which costs 30$ and never come back. What happens if nobody gets the full version or the subscription extension? That wouldn´t even cover any basic development costs or the time you invested to produce the addon. It may work for big companies selling millions of licences of expensive software as they already have a stable customers base because that software is somehow required by other private companies or studios, so they are basically forced to use it during years even if they don´t want it. But I doubt a regular and small developer will find that profitable in our case because the effort to produce a quality addon is significant and the steps to port it to game are always the same, both for a 3$ addon or for a 30$ full version. Also the amount of potential customers here is much smaller. This is not the only game in market and not everyone puts extra money on it because almost 50% of the current players base are also comming from a subscription model (the Xbox game pass).
Subscription models target to cover a significant amount of development costs and then get extra profit out of the after sales stage, either by providing support or by releasing product upgrades. So initial fee won´t be cheap for the same reason. It can be cheap but it will anyway last so that there are enough payments to result in the expected profit you have calculated to obtain per customer. That approach is fine when developers have to face recurrent extra costs themselves as well to keep product alive, for instance if they need to purchase additional information/data from outter sources periodically or they need to hire someone to do a part of the work because they are unable to do it themselves.
To be honest we have enough examples of the “addon of the addon” case, where you need to buy the base addon and then 3 or 4 more expansions come afterwards requiring you to pay extra to have the full product range. On the other hand we also have some examples where developers offer a showcase of their work to customers, by either releasing some free addons or by releasing a free version of their addon without including all features.
This is a free and open market, there´s competition, there´s quality and there´s also trash. In my opinion a subscription won´t prevent that people sells trash as in the worst case you would still lose the subscription fee and that will result in a new generation of scammers that will only target to get those initial fees from customers but still selling the same trash as before. Anyone who offers quality for a reasonable price will always keep customers happy and will have higher chances to succeed with the next products releases. They don´t need any subscription model as you are already subscribed to their quality.
We all buy things every day and pay up front and roll the dice. Sure, if you buy something on Amazon or at Target you can take it back, but depending on how much it cost, you know that sometimes the product ends up in the trash as a lesson learned.
I look at these purchases the same way. I do my research, read and view EVERYTHING I can get my hands on, consider how I may not like the product, then decide. Some purchases have been outstanding, some just OK, and some on the low end. But hey, lesson learned.
And I’d hate to be that developer depending on that $3 per month to keep the doors open only to find that a percentage of my customers stopped subscribing and my money is gone. Sure, you can argue that they could have made a better product, but maybe their next one would be better - you never know.
And I’d love to have a trial period too, but somebody out there would figure out how to crack it and would sell the software, and it could eventually be all over the web.
How do other software creators protect against this?
For example, a friend’s Windows 7 computer had a problem ( ) and I wanted to run a malware scan, but they didn’t have any installed.
So I downloaded and ran the free 15-day trial of Malwarebytes. I ran a full scan, it found some malware, and I quarantined it.
How does Malwarebytes stop someone from selling a cracked version of their software that disables the trial period designation?
Subscription means that the developer has to keep track of all payments, every day. That is time, he will loose to develop a plane. Therefore I think current system is better.
) and I wanted to run a malware scan, but they didn’t have any installed.