sonicbyte wrote: ↑21 Dec 2021
CEO posted
https://www.reasonstudios.com/blog/2021-review
I'm too sensitive here, or does this part of his post is a bit harsh with perpetual license owners (like me)?
I’ll wait right here while you perpetual owners thank your Reason+ subscriber friends, who made it possible for us to have a business model which allows us to continuously release improvements.
You have to see it in another light, on the first glance it may be a bit harsh towards guys like us, who have those annoying perpetual licences and still want support for our bought product.
But then the first quarter of the text is about justifying the subscription model, ok i'll go out on a limb here, if R+ was such a huge success and the tide would have turned i think the message would have been a different one and way shorter, he even tries to make fun of the situation stating only two people preferred subbing over owning. Maybe sometimes truth is hidden in jokes...
The part you quoted is something we often see when subscription services are mentioned, it basically suggests companies can only make good products if they already have a steady stream of income from their customers. While in theory that may work, it's such a huge power shift towards the companies which is simply not good. Usually companies first made good products which the customers then bought, which meant the companies take the risk and get rewarded if they do good.
With subs, customers should now put their trust in companies by giving them a monthly fee in advance to get promised features like VST3 or M1 compatibility (yeah i know there a billions of sound packs in R+, but are they really necessary?). Sure the customers can unsubscribe, but then they have nothing and their money is gone, which makes unsubbing not that easy for some people i suppose.
From Reasonstudio's point of view the choice is obviously very easy, they can (in theory) make quick money with new subscribers or they can improve their product to get people like me to buy the upgrade but then they would have to put more work into it than releasing some sound packs each month, you know like fixing the bugs, implementing the aforementioned VST3 compatibility etc. That's why they will keep pushing the sub model until the last one in controlling can either show some good numbers or has finally given up.
Atm they're losing out on money from me, time will tell if they got enough new subscribers that way and tbh if they would have shown a sign of good faith towards their longer customers by giving a discount on the R12 upgrade i propably would have bought it.