Kickstarter-prohibition with new license?

Hello.

I've been quite happy with the engine until now. Haven't yet upgraded it, and I'm a bit hesitant at all to upgrade to the 4.0, I found this licenseplan :

http://www.visionaire-studio.net/cms/lizenzen-visionairestud...

It's in german but I thank google translate.

I'm planning to run this project of mine on Kickstarter, and carefully calculated every dollar that I'm asking for (20000 dollars) to make it possible to continue developing my project for the year. But if I get funded, your limit of 12,500 dollars funded, forces me to buy a pro-version, which is 1450 euros. This makes my whole project fail and I will loose at least two months of development - and youre still claiming taxes on this?

You wouldnt loose any money if you still get a % of the profit, but supporting indiedevelopers is a big matter for a decent reputation, and it's a bit strange that an outside organisation tries to control how much creatives asks for. Now I'm not sure if I'm gonna upgrade to 4.0 at all and just keep my 3.7 version.

So, I recommend, don't even bring Kickstarter up as a topic in licenses. How ones gets their cash has really not much to do with buying your engine, since if they get funded, they will do it anyway. Also, the licenses fees are soo high when you still get cash from our profit as developers. Engines like Unreal engine and Cryengine doesn't force the developers to buy the engine itself, but just takes a percentage of the profit. Why can't you do the same?

I sincerely hope that you will adress this, since it's a really important topic.

Best regards
Simon

Yeah, the kickstarter thing DOES kind of stick out.
Everything else does make sense to me. But the Kickstarter-Limit seems "random" (for lack of a better world). Well, not only the limit seems strange, but having anything in the licence that interferes with "where" and "how much" budget someone gets for their game seems strange.

The only reason for this I could think of, is to prevent "kickstarter-preorderings". In where you kickstart something for 10 bucks and you get the finished game. Now if you get 20.000 bucks out of it, that means there are about 2000 people who "bought" a game.

I think succesfull Projects like "Stasis" are partly to blame for this. If the "kickstarter" clause wouldn't be in the licence agreement, they wouldn't get any percentage from the game since it isn't "buying".

Can't say I'm madly in love with the new licenceseses.
Yeah, they are more clear than the old ones, and I doubt I will ever use something else than the "Indie" licence, but I can't shake the feeling that it is kind of a bit more restrictive then the 4.x licences.
On the other hand, I just read about them. So feelings might change in the next days

Hätte dazu auch noch eine Frage:
Wenn jemand genau weiß, was er auf dem Spielemarkt tut und davon lebt, dann weiß derjenige auch, welche Lizenz er braucht. Wenn jetzt aber jemand kommt wie ich, der keine Ahnung von Tuten und Blasen hat und so ein Spiel per Kickstarter finanzieren will, was dann? Folgendes Problem:
Ich starte eine Kickstarter Kampagne und brauche 50.000€ für das Spiel. Jetzt habe ich mich aber gnadenlos selbst überschätzt und kein Schwein interessiert sich für das Spiel, es kommen bei Kickstarter nur 17€ zusammen. Hätte ich jetzt schon alleine für den Versuch, eine so hohe Summe zusammen zu bekommen die teuren Visionaire Versionen gebraucht, oder erst ab dem Zeitpunkt, in dem die geplante Finanzierung auch tatsächlich zusammen kommt? Denn im Fall des Scheiterns gibt es kein Geld von Kickstarter und die Kohle für die teure Lizenz, die nun nicht mehr gebraucht wird, ist auch weg.

The license levels are too complicated; the more complex a license is, the more likely potential customers will just throw up their hands before considering the system itself. If you want to increase your user base and provide a greater profit on your software development tool at the same time, instead of putting up road blocks on use, add benefits that are meaningful to the type of customer you want.

The new licenses are a disappointment. And crowfunding is the worst .... Surely I will choose Unity, what a shame, I really like Visionaire

I usually don't post in forums just to confide my disagreement but in this case i couldn't resist, probably because i think Visionaire is a great product and would really like to use it for a commercial game (we produced two commissioned childrens Adventure Games in Flash and are looking for a good engine for our first independent work).

I agree with Ocaso, that the new licensing model is really apprehensive and i could not see myself paying that amount of money for the engine for commercial use, despite of the value it offers. The problem is not so much in the price itself but in the restrictions about crowdfunding aswell as the percentage that has to be delivered with the lower licenses. 10% for a "indie" license? If i self publish the game, even through my own website, i already have to anticipate paying 10-15 % of the sale price to services like PayPal.

The "Professional" License is almost double the price of a full Unity3d Package (a realtime 3D Engine mind you, used by a great deal of published games and considered an industry standard). I'm sorry, i get that the Visionaire Team was probably a bit on the short End with just a 35 Euro Pricetag, but this new model is just beyond reach and reason for me.

A "fair" Pricing Model could look like this:

Free Version - No Compiling

Indie Version - 99 Euros - Compiling with Watermark and up to yearly revenues of less than 20'000 Euros.

Pro Version - 299 Euros - Compiling without Watermark and no restrictions about the yearly revenue that is made with the finished game.

Its kind of similiar to what Construct 2 by Scirra does (and the engine is used to make Adventure Games too):https://www.scirra.com/store/construct-2

I appreciate all the hard work the Visionaire Guys are doing and i'm willing to pay for a great product but i think with pricing i think you shoot yourself in the foot. People will look to alternatives and maybe less specialized and "harder" to use engines that, on the other hand, dont break the bank. Or just go back to Adventure Game Studio.

Another thing that left me a bit disappointed just in terms of customer communications is the last paragraph about how you dont commit to fixing bugs. Does that mean i have to expect a faulty piece of software for 3000 Euros and have no right to complain about it? Thats kind of like buying a car and the salesperson is telling me that i can take a bike in case the wheels come off.

I really wish the best for the software but im afraid with these new changes i cant come along for the ride so i hope you guys maybe reconsider some of your decisions. Thank you.

Hey guys,
first of all i'd like you to wait for the official translations for the license levels. I don't think that a software tool is translating accurate here.

The new license plan have been talked through with several people - and the main target was to offer fanadventure developers, indie developers and as well professional studios several new publishing potentials, based on their individual aims. Also a main target was, that the visionaire team can participate on the success of the games, so that we can fasten up the development of the game engine itself. This is why we have a percental fee now in the lower licenses (INDIE & PRO). If you buy the PREMIUM License you can do with your game whatever you want... without fees.

Over the months and years, people here asked for more frequent updates. We couldn't do that without adjusting the revenues. We can't work thousands of hours on this kind of game engine for users, who are not willing to give a piece of their game success back to the creators of the engine.

If you have a closer look, you'll see that you can do pretty much with the 49€ license. And all you have to share is just 10% of your income on digital sales with us. And for this 10% you get a great and easy to use game engine with recent updates. I'd say this is pretty fair.

Let's talk about the crowdfunding topic. If you start a crowdfunding campaign you have to create a budget. And for sure the visionaire studio license - that you want to use, based on your marketing plans - should be part of this budget. If you want to have unlimited marketing and distributing rights... go on with the PREMIUM License and add a total of 2950€ to your budget on kickstarter. For this you can give the kickstarter supporters unlimited physical packages, digital downloads on several platforms and much more. If you just want to offer digital downloads - right on... go ahead with the PRO license with the affordable price of 1450€ and add this to the budget of your campaign. For this price, ALL the kickstarter supporters can download your game FREE of charge. Also you get unlimited physical distribution rights for your product. AND you can publish the game in digital marketplaces for just 6-8% disposal (based on branding). I'd say this is pretty much fair and affordable... to you... and to us as the developers of the game engine.

It'd be very unfair to the developers of this great engine, if you just buy a license for 49€ and offer thousands of kickstarter supporters free game downloads, while these people give money to YOU... so that you can make yourself financially independent while the game engine developers get absolutely nothing. In this case we'd have to shut down this great project... in which we invested ten thousands of hours.

For sure we think about the options and we also take your opinions seriously. Maybe we also change some of our decisions... but i'd wish you guys would also look at the other side of the medal.

All the best,
Thomas

Thomas - as i stated above i absolutely see the other side of the medal and totally understand that you probably have to make some adjustments in pricing. But to be blunt: you wont be able to compete with other engines out there whoay be not offering some.of the usability you do but therefor maybe other things like full 3D support, wider use in the industry, more supported platforms etc etc I could purchase a Unity Pro license and the Adventure Game Creator Plugin by Chris Burton and still come out cheaper than your most expensive Version. You see where i'm going? Adventure Developers that rely on engines like Visionaire are, with a few exceptions like Daedalic (who have moved on to Unity i heard), mostly One to two Man Shows who dont have these kinds of ressources and are making those games in their spare time. And people who coulr afford 3000 dollars worth of software possibly also can afford paying a programmer working in another engine or even making their own. Im not putting you guys down but i think its really not very smart business decision and will drive a lot of people away. And you shouldnt underestimate the accountant nightmare a percentage in revenues could create. Who guarantees you the sale figure a 45€ subscriber gives you are correct? Andwhat will you do if theyre not? Go to court? How willyou keep track of that even when its just 50 published games? I think you could run into the danger of working more with these issues than the software itself.

I totally agree with Joel. We are 4 persons, unemployed, and if we sell the game on Steam, or Play Store, we have to deduct a 30% commission (Steam and Google), plus 21% tax (we live in Spain). If we add 10% commission of Visionaire would have a 39% profit to split between 4 people ... and if we sell on our website would be a 10-15% commission PAYPAL + 21% tax + 10% Visionaire commission = 54% profit. That 10% extra commission makes a big difference ...

I'd rather pay 99 € for the indie license, that there is the 10% commission and there are no limitations crowfunding (or Visionaire will take a 10% commission from $ 40,000).. For small indie studios, we started, it's only fair. I wholeheartedly support the example of licenses has Joel.

1. Create some graphics, sound and design for your game.
2. Put it on Kickstarter with mockups.
3. When project is funded - buy the game engine of your choice and make your game.

Problem solved.

BTW: 10% isn't much, excluding iOS platform.

iOS income:
-30% for Apple
- about 20% for taxes
- 10% for Visio devs

What's left is 40% (or less) for a game that you were creating whole year spending your money and nerves.

As Joel says: It's quite unreasonable to charge to much for an engine when it's not as wide as udk, cryengine or gamemaker. Visionaire doesn't have support for a 3D scene, which options out the concept of lighting a scene properly (unless people use 3Dprograms, which costs).

Even if you've all worked basically pro bono, and that's not fair for neither for you, it took a bit overkill to the point of greedy. You would get tons of cash just by taking the royalties and not infiltrating Kickstarter. Kickstarter is kind of the holy grail for indie developers, and for an outside organisation to make money out of the concept of donations is not that cool. Sure, people who donate might get a game, but if the game sells then even more people will buy it and you will then get money. A successful crowdfunded game is good marketing for the engine since you obviously get your logo shown. A huge lot of people doesn't even know what Kickstarter is, so that many doesn't pledge compared to what how many units Steam sells of a crowdfunded game. And the cash pledged is so necessary for the development.

Basically, a Kickstarter-restriction just makes bad market (since I work with marketing and work in that industry I know a bit). The funding needed would be accordingly raised because of an outside organisation, and higher risk that it won't get funded at all, because of a higher goal needed.

It's like your marketing just went down, there are more people out there. Research into the engines that already exist and see how they work wthings out and minimalise your prices according to what one can actually do in the engine. With your last license for 3.x I was really happy with the low prices and talked good of your engine within the industry in Sweden (and several bigger companies seemed interested, Paradox Interactive for one). But this? I'm sorry, it's hard to stand behind the engine with these licenses.

It's not unfair for the developers behind Visionaire to remove the Kickstarter-restrictions, if the VS-team actually shares the royalties/taxes paid out to you - which is a lot since you're only like 5 people behind the engine.