• (Carried over from a thread under 'General Discussions')


    I read the part about a grace period, but that's still a hard cutoff for people who might have purchased just prior to that. A better way would have been to announce that this policy would be taking effect at the beginning of next calendar year, and then to grant support through the remaining year + 12 further months starting January 1st to anyone purchasing a license between now and then. Sort of like an incentive sale.



    -Comments from the original thread:

    "So, I think most people can understand the need for some form of continuing revenue stream in order to provide service for a product like this. Otherwise, it turns into a whole lot of work for inadequate returns and could lead to support being dropped altogether. That's actually why I began donating to ORK's Patreon account a couple of months ago, and even though I purchased my license back in January, I figure I've gotten about a years worth out of it so I don't really mind having to purchase a new one to acquire the 2018.1 update (fantastic update by the way). That said, on behalf of anyone who might have purchased their license only a month or two prior to this last update, that hard cutoff seems terribly unfair. Shouldn't you at least extend to those people a credit of some sort that would allow them to receive updates for a year minus the time they've had their license?"


    dlevel:
    "this is the case, if you purchased ork 2 months ago, you have 10 months of updates remaining, you just have to e-mail GIL."

    gamingislove:
    "As @dlevel said, that's already the case - see the update policy changes for this.
    Also, please discuss this in the official thread for the update policy changes :)"
  • @gamingislove
    Well I do have a contract through Unity and you are a sub contractor bound by the sellers agreement...which they changed the day AFTER I started the discussion with them ...not "over the years"...if you'd like a html copy of the contract the day BEFORE they altered it just ask.....
    I'll forward your answer that I have no contract with you to Unity support and see what they say....at this point I'm just going on the assumption my copy of ork will become obsolete and unusable next API change and do my best to make sure others don't unwillingly buy an asset that will squeeze them for constant update fees in the future...$50 lost AFAIC...I'll skip lunch or eat ramen for a couple days.
    Just bought a template to replace ork and asked the dev about free updates...he was surprised I even asked the question and gave me a promise via email....I couldn't hit the "pay now" button fast enough....
    You really need to change your signature btw..the part about free updates is an outright fabrication at this point...
  • A bit late to the party on this one, but here's my two penn'orth, for what it's worth:

    First off, I don't think any reasonable member of the community would begrudge hardworking professional devs like GIL from making a decent living from their efforts. The best ones go above and beyond to provide a product and then maintain it, and the up-front cost of a system like ORK is ridiculously cheap in respect to its feature-set

    But, I'm afraid you'll have to count me out on this. I've used ORK on a couple of projects, but I don't exclusively develop RPGs, and I really don't want to get tied down in the way this new business model is trying to push us

    I've bought a fair number of other build-your-own systems over the years, and if every one of them went down this route I could find myself paying out a substantial amount of money just to keep them all up to date, often when I wasn't even actively using them at the time

    But, I've also got a template system of my own. It's not particularly polished, but it more or less works, and it's always up to date, so I'll be switching to that for my own future developments

    A shame, because I've got a couple of ORK-based projects I'd shelved to come back to later, which I'll now have to either abandon or port over to my own system - but, as I said, I'm rather pig-headedly resistant to being forced down directions I may not want to go in, and that's what this new model is trying to do

    I rather suspect that I won't be the only one to silently fade into the night either. Devs with ongoing ORK-based projects have little option but to grit their teeth and go down this path, but I suspect that many existing, and many potential new users, will be deterred by the prospect of having to continually pay out to keep their system up to date, and will vote with their wallets

    From one perspective I hope I'm wrong about that, because as I said up top, I think that the best devs deserve to be properly recompensed for their efforts. I just don't think that this is the right way to go about it, either for ORK, or for the development community as a whole



  • edited October 2018
    I'm afraid I'm going to have to fade into the night. But I wish Gil the best for a great system.
    Post edited by Catacomber on
  • I'm jumping in not because of the paid change model, but because I'm shocked I can´t even download from the asset store the version I paid for in the past. My only criticism to GIL is that he doesn't quit listen to his users. If you pay attention to the forums the questions are always the same all over again, meaning the lack of a comprehensive tutorials, and now days, video based tutorials are the best. There were several attempts on YouTube and all of them failed to commit at some point (even myself). GIL you had a good base of "Senior" users helping each other that now are fading away.
    I suggested in the past the creation of ORK Starter kits, and the ppl were very optimist because there's a need for that, having real templates for FPS games, 2D games. I don't have to go bother dlevel (2D ORK guru) to ask him how to make my game, or spend 3 hours Skype session with a user to help him animate and equip his ORK FPS. So there you go a couple of ideas to make you get more money and strengthen the community in using ORK. Also, get rid of the eggs characters and start using more appealing models.
    I apologize for my English, if I sound rude, and the unorganized stream of thoughts.
    I stopped using ORK way back when the grid battle system came live, even though I supported and pledged for it as my appreciation for the product and GIL commitment. I general I don't stick with third party assets that comes in the dll way with no source code.
    Welp, my two cents to the pool. Let's see what ORK 3 has to offer in the future.
  • @RustedGames You can still download the deprecated version of Ork, by going to "My Assets" then searching for Ork in the smaller Search box (the one next to "My Local Downloads", not the one right at the top of the screen). That will then allow you to download the last released version of the "old" Ork

    Whether it's worth doing that, as you'll be downloading a version whose bugs will now never get fixed, and which will probably stop working altogether at some unspecified point in the future, as Unity itself gets upgraded, well, to be honest I kinda think it probably isn't...
  • Well appears I'm not alone...off to email Unity support...wonder what their answer will be when I tell them they sent me here for a refund...and now Gil is telling me I have to go to them...a circle meant to frustrate....how to lose customers 101...
  • I bought ork in 2013 or 2014. I had a lot of fun on it. Do you think that in 5 years paid 100 euros is resonable?

    GIL might have had to make regular version changes. He has been too cool all his years instead of making a new version of ORK every 18 months.

    If GIL proposes this system it is because it thinks that its asset is no longer viable for him and if we do not support it we will lose one of the best asset of Unity.

    If ORK disappears I think even leave on Unreal 4!

    You have probably already bought a lot of assets thinking to have regular updates and see the asset abandoned by the developer ...

    It's the guarantee to have ORK always with updates otherwise it will not be updated.

    After nothing prevents you to buy ORK to update for 12 months and then wait a little before paying. So you have an ORK for 18 months or more paying only once.

    But do not stand here and tell potential buyers who will help GIL.
    He gave a lot for the community.
  • Unfortunately I am also one of those people who is just going to have to call it good here. One of my biggest issues has been the bugs I've encountered whenever I tried to do something that wasn't 100% following the basic tutorials. On top of that, I've had stuff that worked as expected go and break after updating to the next version. I stepped away from my project several times because of different issues encountered.

    I just cannot see paying for yearly updates. Maybe once ORK 3.0 comes out depending on its features and how it works.
  • edited October 2018
    In reply to @LNMRae message above, I can assure you when you go deep into ORK there is much much MUCH more you can do than what you see in the demo (and IMO the demo with the egg heads is not a good marketing for ORK but that's another conversation) and the bugs are not many for the scale of this framework and are being fixed asap by @gamingislove.

    I'm defending this asset because my project is fairly large and ORK along with its developer helped me a lot to achieve that. Also, my project is 2.5 old and started with ORK 2.5.0 or so and Unity 5.6, now it's in version 2.19.0 and unity 2018.2 and still gets better and better, of course, I have to make adjustments for each big update, but it works perfectly fine.

    I can understand someone not agrees with the new update policy, but bugs and breaks being the reason is just not the case and new users coming over to check before buy shouldn't be afraid of that.
    Post edited by dlevel on
  • @imgumby
    I've already told you to send me your order/invoice number over a month ago, and reminded you about that 3 weeks ago.
    Please consider rating/reviewing my products on the Asset Store (hopefully positively), as that helps tremendously with getting found.
    If you're enjoying my products, updates and support, please consider supporting me on patreon.com!
  • edited November 2018
    EDIT: Nvm.
    Post edited by niksha on
  • edited November 2018
    @niksha
    Gil tried Patreon option first, it did not work so he had a choice. Get a full time job and abandon or severely slow down development of product. Or try yearly subscription option. Thankfully to those who do actually use ORK for game development, he chose yearly subscription option.

    ********************************
    Generally, I think the expectation that plugin author has to provide updates forever, even if product does not bring enough income anymore is unrealistic.

    I also fail to see the merit in argument, that those of us who have bought tons of assets and have this amazing access to tons of framework, to develop any kind of game opportunity or interest permits suffer if occasionally we have to re-buy some of the assets. We basically have the luxury in technology to the point where we can randomly grab and stockpile plugins on sales, so if maybe sometime down the line in the future we decide to actually use them, we can do that and in 90% cases get latest versions as well. The very fact we have this option is ridiculous and it will be hard to find anywhere else where this situation exists.

    Now whatever promises were made, of course this situation is only made possible because developers can sell enough copies of their product to make a profit, and justify selling it at tiny fraction of the price they would charge client if they had to make this product exclusively for them. If developer cannot sell enough copies, they won't be able to provide updates.

    One criticism I can support is that it would be better if depreciated version of ORK received critical bug fixes for some defined amount of time. Like a half a year or something.

    The whole situation would also probably go better if there was easily digestible structure to a new policy. Like ORK 20XX, where new version is released every January. (ORK 2019, ORK 2020 etc.)





    Post edited by hellwalker on
  • @hellwalker

    I didn't know he tried Patreon already. Like I said, I wasn't using ORK for my projects so I was out of loop for all these changes since I barely visit these forums.

    If Patreon already failed, I can see why he decided to go this route. As someone with released games, I can see why you can't just devote your time 24/7 to a released project without earning anything else from it. Eventually you'll have to move on and release a sequel or a new product to make money.

    Anyway, I'll use the current ORK release I have to box out and test my project. Then maybe I'll purchase (renew?) a new ORK license in the future, if I decide to go with an RPG game this time.
  • I've been with Ork since version 1 or before. I don't really know, the first time I saw it I felt it was the unity rpg maker. It's fantastic and the tutorials here are really good.

    Having said that, I know it's a hard thing to keep free updates for life but unfortunatelly for us living in other countries, this was a very expensive purchase. It was almost half the minimum wage here in Brazil. Would you consider lower prices for other prices (often called Parity Purchasing Power)?

    Thank you and again, great work on Ork!
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