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Your Free Creator Subscription is Ending ...

Kallah

January 28, 2018 02:27

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I got this email notification today ...

"Your Free Creator Subscription is Ending"

Personally speaking, so early in the development of the program, I think subscription plans are over-rated.

I, for one, can't afford to *renew* this free subscription. I know LL probably wants to start earning income from this program ASAP, I understand that ... but I can't justify paying for SL AND Sansar. I just can't. I have to choose between eating and paying for hobbies and so far eating wins.

IMHO, enforcing these subscription plans so early (you are still in beta) is going to do more harm than good. I will likely loose interest in Sansar soon after my *free* subscription ends on Jan 31st. I have SL so there within I shall be happy ;o}

Once this *free* subscription ends I will be limited in how many items I can sell in my store, and down to three experiences (not that I've taken them up on the 5 since I knew I would loose two anyway). I've said all this before. But I say it again, it's too early to be charging people. Just my opinion.

I have to first be able to earn some S$ so I can afford to pay for a subscription and so far that's not happening. I don't blame people for not buying things at this point, too many bugs that need to be worked out first.

Don't get me wrong, I've appreciated the *free* subscriptions to date (two rounds of three months each) but I just can't justify paying for it right now, especially because I do pay for SL already as I've said before.

I believe many feel the same as I and I fear you will loose more than you will gain.

26 comments

• 1
  
  Andrew Lawrence January 28, 2018 03:43

  I agree, I'm hoping they will extend the creator subscription again or make it permanent for the creator preview testers.  It's still alpha and we're still helping them test it.  It would be a net loss for them if we have less opportunity to test things.
  
  The current subscription model doesn't make sense in the first place.  They need to decouple all the options so that people can pay for them separately.  The biggest reason is that having more experiences on a single account isn't a real benefit.  It's not possible to collaborate yet, so no single person has serious use for that many experiences unless they want extra test environments.  However:
  
  Being able to purchase better performance options for existing experiences would actually be a great benefit worth paying for.
  
  Being able to purchase additional publish capability as needed would be worth paying for, with the ability to edit and test unpublished templates.
  
  Being able to purchase better support would be worth paying for, if someone finds they need to contact support often for their projects.
  
  They are attempting to monetize an unfinished service without having a real understanding of their own ecosystem.  It's absurd that they are trying to charge for edit access to additional experiences, when you can only edit a single experience at once.  An unlimited number of experiences can be stored as templates without having edit access to them, which means that the storage itself is not a huge business cost.  People would be encouraged to pay for more publish capability if they could still edit non-published experiences.  The number of experiences that can be published at any one time is the only legitimate restriction currently in place.
  
  In contrast, a single free experience could have hundreds of instances running on many servers if it became popular.  It's like they have the engineering department following the lead of the marketing department, and the marketing department has already made up their own beliefs of what can be scaled up by subscription costs without consulting the engineers.  So they definitely need a complete redesign of the subscription model if they want Sansar to become successful.

• 1
  
  Kallah January 28, 2018 04:18

  Well hey, just like SL, one can create multiple Sansar accounts, I know of some folks already doing it ... so each ALT (as we call these alternate accounts in SL) can have three experiences ... no need to *pay* for five then right!? Really, you would think they'd of learned from SL and made some real tangible changes in that regard.

  Also, with the size of each experience, who needs five? Three is more than enough for me and if need be I could do with just one.

  The thing that will really hurt me is to limit my store listings and therefore my potential sales. No sales, no paying for Sansar as a subscription, not at this early beta (alpha really, as you and others admit) stage.

  Seriously Sansar/LL, what are you really offering me, I can't seem to grasp it.

   

• 0
  
  Lex January 28, 2018 12:13

  Nobody is telling you to pay so i cant see what your problem is with the ending of the free creator subscription. As it does not has any influence on your and many other accounts. But i have easy speaking as im not after money. Like SL I made everything myself. i never bought/sold items  ,the 500 stipend and get some money sometimes but that where gifts not that i asked for it.  hmm to keep it short, i still cant see the problems you name here. You say you dont need it but still you are upset?

  Edited by Lex January 28, 2018 12:20
• 1
  
  Andrew Lawrence January 28, 2018 12:47

  That's the point, we want the ability to pay for things that are in our interest and will help Sansar grow as a platform. The current subscription model doesn't serve either our interest or Sansar's. At the very least, the prices need to reflect the stage of development. However, it's in Sansar's best interest to completely rethink the current subscription model, and not even have the creator subscription as we know it today. We want to see Sansar make progress towards success, instead of hindering its tester base with an absurd paywall.

• 1
  
  NorthernKiara January 28, 2018 21:16

  The 50 item store limit for free subscriptions is being lifted for the time being....

   

  

  https://modemworld.me/category/sansar/

   

   

• 0
  
  Kallah January 29, 2018 07:19

  Key words: "for the time being".

• 0
  
  Lex January 29, 2018 08:35

  I just take it as it comes.

• 1
  
  NorthernKiara January 29, 2018 13:30

  Even if the 50 item store limit is implemented on free accounts you can always just rotate items in and out to keep things under the 50.  (In with the new out with the old.) 

  The only items that are moving for me right now are mostly the free ones.  Lots of sales going on there.  (If you can say that free is actually a sale.)
  But I am not here for the money, I just enjoy creating stuff so it's hobby for me.  I'll probably end up listing most clothing items for free... for "the time being".

  Plus the three experiences is plenty for me...it's all I can manage right now.  (Already have a full time job that pays the bills including hobby stuff.)  

  But again I agree... Sansar is in Alpha-Beta still and it will be a while before things start taking off here so probably extending the creator subscriptions makes sense. 

  Also...I do agree that there should NOT be a limit for store items on free accounts.  LL is already taking a percentage on the sales so having to pay for a subscription in order to list more than 50 is asking a lot. 

• 0
  
  Debi Baskerville January 29, 2018 13:41

  I can understand why Linden Lab is beginning to implement paid subscriptions. Yes, it's beta but it IS open to the public. The fact that anyone can have three free experiences and unlimited items for sale on the marketplace for the "time being" is extremely generous on their part. Compared to SL this is a gold mine here for us. We have no expenses related to creating content. We don't pay any upload fees unlike in SL.

  I actually won a creator subscription back in October, but have only had three experiences published at any given time and most of the time I only have two experiences published. I've created many more but they are in my inventory waiting to be republished at any time I choose to publish if I have a free slot open. I currently use the extra experiences I won for testing because I don't want to grow dependent on something I may not want or be able to pay for in the future; however, my sales in the store are more than adequate to pay for a subscription fee if I needed to pay for a creator account. 

  So what I'm saying is even though I have a paid creator account for a year I could easily manage right now if my account was downgraded to a free account because you get so dang much here for free!

• 0
  
  Yan Hoxley February 03, 2018 19:53

  I agree, personally I lost interest by seeing this mail (if any interest was present after trying Sansar interface and basically seeing how it works), I have my stuff and island and whole virtual life at SL and I kinda not get much point of Sansar now, its else than SL and Im affraid it will not attract ppl so much and I dont see potential of community growth, if Im trader Id not invest in this project in this stage, hence will not invest to pay for early alpha as well.
  
  From this aspect is way better for creators to get Unity or Unreal and sell creations in high detail there and help small independent game developers by that... and who likes to share his world with ppl and like the feedback and creating of nice things for specific SL use to make ppl happy about their homes, will stay in SL which is simple and easy to use even for girls, who are most likely buying stuff for virtual home more than guys :)

• 2
  
  Whystler February 04, 2018 06:10

  Society, as it is, dictates that folks need to pay for things, and that includes folks like Linden Labs.  So the only way that they can pay for things...
  
  -staff that create Sansar
  -staff that help you
  -staff that promote Sansar
  -overhead for their offices
  -services they need to run Sansar
  
  ... is to charge for the thing they are making.
  
  I'm not sure why this isn't ... obvious?  But I suppose there's a lot of free-not-really-free hype  that makes us fall into a disconnect with the reality of the economy as it stands.
  
  To say something as simple as "paid subscriptions are overrated" is greatly naive to how the world works currently with ... money.
  
  Even if the world were wonderfully without the need for money, we would still all be expected to contribute as well as receive.
  
  
  

  Edited by Whystler February 04, 2018 06:16
• 1
  
  Andrew Lawrence February 04, 2018 06:45

  If someone has enough money that it's no big deal to donate to a project in alpha, that we're only here to test at this point, that's their prerogative.  In the real business world, people won't invest in something from another business that won't enable them to make a profit.  I think we are all glad to be here to help test Sansar, but let's be honest.  It's going to be alpha for a while longer, and the biggest positive thing we can do here is help test it.  So anything that makes it harder for us to test things is only going to hurt Sansar and keep it alpha for longer.

• 1
  
  Debi Baskerville February 04, 2018 12:58

  How is only having three experiences hindering you from testing? You don't have to pay anything to help test. You don't have to pay anything to upload content. You don't have to pay anything to list items in the store. You don't have a limit to the number of things you can list. I fail to see how you have to pay anything to be here to help test.

• 0
  
  Whystler February 04, 2018 18:07

  Hey Andrew,
  
  Not Alpha - the project is in Beta currently.
  
  https://www.lindenlab.com/releases/sansar-creator-beta-opens
  
  While, in the past, Alpha and Beta were serious testing phases, there now is a significant difference between the two.  Many software packages list themselves as Beta (ie. IMVU for 10 ten years) when they are quite marketable products.
  
  Consequently, Beta has now come to mean, "in a state of development, but a viable product for use".  And in truth, Sansar is a viable product for use.

  Edited by Whystler February 04, 2018 18:08
• 1
  
  Luna Bliss February 04, 2018 19:33

  " ...will stay in SL which is simple and easy to use even for girls, who are most likely buying stuff for virtual home more than guys :) "
  

  Yan, this lil girl is wondering what you meant by the above comment.

  Edited by Luna Bliss February 04, 2018 19:36
• 2
  
  Andrew Lawrence February 04, 2018 20:37

  In order to effectively develop and test your scripts, you need to set up small test environments with the absolute minimum amount of objects.  It is only practical to add scripts to a completely built and polished published experience after all new functionality works as expected in a test environment.  It is also not trivial to set up the test environments in most cases.  Yes, you can delete an experience and keep the scene.  That limits you to one active test experience that can be consistently accessible to others, while forcing you to constantly swap out your test environments and risk deleting them completely.  The best solution would be to allow a much higher number of experiences that can be edited and tested without swapping, while limiting the number of "active" experiences that can be published and visited by anyone.  Even a single free "active" experience that can be published, along with the ability to test with a large number of unpublishable experiences, would be far more useful than having 3 publishable experiences without that ability.  We need to be able to edit all scenes regardless of whether or not they are linked to an experience, just to be able to check what is in them.
  
  If they want to limit us further in ways that would incur no additional cost for them if they did not, before giving us the tools we need to do things effectively, that is their prerogative.  The subscription was given to hold our interest in the platform while the core functionality is still being developed, so it is strange that they have abandoned that method of encouragement when the core functionality still has a long way to go.  No one is expecting free stuff after it is actually possible for programmers to make money on the platform.  I was explicitly invited to help test the platform and give constructive feedback.  I am trying to make sure they are aware of the reasons that the platform is currently not worth developing on for most people, so that it actually can be in the future.  No product is ever improved by apologists and sycophants.  The fact is that the current subscription model doesn't serve anyone.  We need to be able to purchase additional "active" experience subscriptions as needed, and not in blocks.  More importantly, we need to be able to purchase better performance options for the experiences we already have.  These are examples of standard models for computing subscription services that they can follow if they want Sansar to make money with subscriptions.  The current subscription model doesn't serve anyone's interest other than hobbyists who don't need a return on investment.
  
  Alpha means that there are still significant changes that break existing content.  There are still significant changes that break existing content, so it is alpha no matter what anyone from the marketing department claims.  Pretending it is ready for most people, when the size of the user base clearly indicates that it is not, is not in the best interest of the product.  At the current pace it will not be a desirable platform to work on for at least another 2 years, and that is an extremely optimistic prediction that no one should bet money on.  Anyone is free to take that advice and use it to their advantage by planning more for the future Sansar, or to ignore it and waste time playing catch-up as existing content gets broken during the alpha stage.  We are here to test it and give feedback after every change, not to pretend it is already a finished product.  People are free to disagree, but this is my personal assessment that I believe is based on the truth and serves the best interest of Sansar.

• 0
  
  Yan Hoxley February 04, 2018 21:02

  Luna, nothing sexist really even tho it could sound like :) more kind of observation, not every girl is really that much atracted by mmo 3D games and having good rig at table to run it, on the other hand theres Sims-like SL with ergonomic interface, vast world with 2-5s long teleports, where u can make your avatar pretty, buy millions of skins and clothes, building home easily, socialize and 'travel' etc + quicklearn curve even for ppl not familiar with positioning in 3D and it runs almost on every machine. No surprise community of girls in SL is enormous and big part of economy rely on them :)

  Sansar Experiences are something way else to me, we will see where it will lead in future.

  In this early state Sansar rather needs to convince ppl to try and creators to see clear future, willing to fill marketplace with stuff, or it will suffer like windows10 phones. Subscription is not very best way how to grow community in a new project.

• 0
  
  Kallah February 05, 2018 08:40

  I will continue to play around in Sansar for now but I still cannot justify paying for a beta project. Perhaps as it develops and if/when my finances allow we'll see what the future brings.

• 1
  
  Chris Jackson February 05, 2018 09:16

  50 item store limit has been officially lifted as of this last release. It is no more "for the time being".

  As for "beta". Sansar is currently in "Open Beta" as Linden calls it. Ebbe posted in Discord that he hopes Sansar will move from open beta to beta this year. That isn't exactly what one wants to hear! Sansar needs to be as I call it "retail ready" by the end of this year or the public WILL blow it off and move on. Regardless of reasons, this is taking too long. I mean, we are looking at AT LEAST another year of "beta".

• 2
  
  Chris Jackson February 05, 2018 09:19

  I have to say, as Ebbe eluded to as a possibility, they opened the doors WAY too soon.

  Edited by Chris Jackson February 05, 2018 09:19
• 0
  
  Whystler February 07, 2018 20:49

  Expecting women to be or act a certain way is sexist.  Assuming that women are more interested in Sansar to look pretty and do pretty things, rather than do other things is sexist.  I like to look pretty.
  
  We don't use the term "boys" to refer to men.  It's 2017.  If we've learned from the past, and respect everyone, we don't use girls to refer to women.

  Edited by Whystler February 07, 2018 21:42
• 0
  
  Kallah February 08, 2018 10:33

  I believe it's great that they opened the beta doors initially for creators but to charge for this is too early, especially if it'll be in beta for another year and as noted "we're all still learning". Surely there's other ways to make money? If you want to pay, you can afford to pay, you want to help them financially while in beta that is totally up to you and Sansar should make that available by a donation button or something. Talking payments/subscriptions while still in beta (no matter how you care to define that) for the majority however is just going to drive peeps off IMHO, especially new folks that don't really have any skills to offer as far as creating goes. As stated above, they're already taking a bite out of store sales so for me that's a loss ... I'm not complaining about it, that's how it's done in SL but in SL as a registered member I get other perks such as a weekly stipend, etc. If you want me to pay then you need to offer me something akin to what I get in SL and if that offer is good enough I just might bite. I don't see any benefit to me with the sub plans they currently have so I see no point in paying a sub fee. Maybe send out a survey to see what your community wants here and what features they're willing to pay for verses subscription plans? Just a suggestion.

• 0
  
  Sorina Garrigus April 07, 2018 19:45

  I am just an explorer and It is waaaaaaaaaaaaaay too early for them to be talking about subscriptions. They are calling this a beta ... but it totally feels like an alpha. It has a LONG long way to go.
  But in the old days of SL it was all subscription based. Some old timers have said including myself, said that making it totally free ended up bringing a lot of people coming in uninterested in spending money, and it created a lot of alt abuse issues. Camping, harassment etc. They should look to the early days of SL and how they got things moving. They made it so they paid small amounts for events, They rewarded the most popular builds/attractions with real world money etc. I have a hard time seeing this not going very far for many years based on where it is at now. Most every visitor that comes through pretty much is saying they were expecting things to be a LOT further along. Even walking from one place to another is awkward.

• -1
  
  Sorina Garrigus April 07, 2018 19:54

  @ Whystler
  

  It is beta in name only. From a user point of view it is so very alpha. If this is actual Beta ... Sansar is in deep trouble.
  "beta version. A pre-release of software that is given out to a large group of users to try under real conditions. Beta versions have gone through alpha testing inhouse and are generally fairly close in look, feel and function to the final product; however, design changes often occur as a result."

• 0
  
  Galen April 07, 2018 22:10

  I disagree on pretty much all points, including SL history. But this is all semantics. LL would be fools to give everything away for free and then expect to start charging for it later. That would enrage people.

• 1
  
  Whystler April 08, 2018 00:44

  It's quite traditional Beta as far as my 20+ year experience has been with testing VR platforms.  You can quote what you like, but it is definitely not in an Alpha stage.
  
  Sansar is not "in trouble".  Hyperbole is a word we should all also look up, particularly if you don't want to sound silly in a forum.

  Edited by Whystler April 08, 2018 00:45