I didn't have time to read all the previous comments, but is there anyway to show your donation? Like an online receipt, I was thinking developers could give out incentives, say players get supershinyawesomesword if they donate $5+ and send their receipt code to the owner of the game. Just an idea.

But your more hardcore loyal players are willing to buy a subscription then donate $5 directly to BYOND to get that cool armor they want.

Should be able to see exactly how much you've donated in your account settings... I want to know how much I've donated so I know exactly how much more I'll need to donate to show up in the top 30. T_T

P.S. I only donate on my Howey key lol.

10k+this month is still a good amount of support.

I'd imagine that the donation money is put mostly towards a "salary" for the staff (Lummox, Tom, and perhaps others?), so they do not have to work day jobs, and can therefore work on BYOND development full-time.

A drop in donation money would likely mean a drop in their pay, which would likely result in one or more of them having to get a "real" job, and thus, have much less time to work on BYOND.

Well, basically, yeah.

It is not "donate to boost our morale/enthusiasm/motivation!" it's "donate so we can afford to live without having outside income, so we don't have to work 9-5, so we can have all of that "free" time to work on BYOND"

If the money coming into BYOND (through all channels; the donations sound like they were intended as a supplement to the other income sources, even though thay may well be the lion's share of the total...) is insufficient to pay the staff a living wage, then they'll have to get "real" jobs.

It's not about not wanting to work on BYOND, it's about the basic facts of Life.

This is just a long-term thing. We have to consistently bring in money to fund development, since I have elected not to devote resources to further updating the website/etc for the "business model". Some months we will reach the goal, some months we won't. Hopefully we'll reach it more often than not, but mainly I want the thousands of users who have played BYOND games without contributing for years to realize that their efforts are very much needed.

We have some nice new developments coming in the next release, and that is basically funded by the money brought in here, since the developments in themselves most likely will not bring in the short-term income we need.

For Tom's birthday we must get him this:





Anyways, I am happy to see the amount of donations lately. But you still shall not pass because I will pass you all!

I don't want to be a debby downer, but BYOND really needs a better business model than it has. The flash client needs to happen and you've got to get this thing to a point where people can deploy their games on facebook or other higher traffic areas. Look at Graal Online. It was a dying community and a dying game but they made the push to flash and deployed on facebook and now their playerbase has exploded. In game purchases and etc have made the entire project viable when it was in its death throws in the late 2000s.

The pager isn't what this community needs, and the community really only adds value by bringing developers together. The part of BYOND which is trying to keep game players on the same site is flawed and doomed to fail. Focus on getting a product that can bring in lots of players and the developer side of the community will flourish and make up for any shortcommings. And if you have to charge monthly licensing fees to allow developers to use the flash client then that is fine.

Without a drastic change in business model, there is no way Lummox Jr can be expected to make ends meet based on the revenue steams from this product. Go find a full time programming job and have developers work on this in their free time OR keep pushing this full time objective but work towards a business model that is sustainable.

You'd probably use a sliding scale for pricing depending on if the end user was charging for it or using advertisements.