ID:1856039
May 21 2015, 8:16 am
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So I just wrote a demo that I was really proud of but my membership ran out and I couldn't upload my demo files. So I go to renew my membership and this is what I see:
 Look, I love BYOND but I don't have that kinda money. I'm a college student, I can barely afford a diet of top ramen... Didn't a whole bunch of people just recently donate thousands of dollars? What's with the price hike? Isn't this like double what it was a year ago? I would like to continue making resources for this community and building games here but not at those prices. | |
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May 21 2015, 8:20 am
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Zecronious
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If these prices don't go down, consider this my official resignation.
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I don't see what the big deal is, the price for five years here is the same as 1 year of xbox live gold, the prices are already low.
I'm not sure what kind of pricing there was in the past but I never read any mention of a membership price increase, not to say it didn't happen though. | |
Superbike32 wrote:
five years here is the same as 1 year of xbox live gold And what do you get for Xbox Live Gold? A lot. All you get here is like 50mb of file storage. I've tried other file storage but it never seems to work unless you use theirs. | |
There is plenty of file storage that works fine with BYOND if your just looking for somewhere to upload your project so it can be downloaded for local play.
You have to keep in mind to use a direct link to the file though, and most people use the wrong URL. Paste the URL(s) you've tried putting in and I can help you get the direct link, or tell you which service(s) will work with BYOND, there are plenty of free ones. But if you only want membership for uploading your files/projects to be downloadable of course you'd think it's not worth the money. | |
I don't want to turn this thread into another 'lets all bash BYOND' but seriously is this:
 Worth $24 USD a year? Really? REALLY? Let the big pockets make donations but don't take out BYOND's financial strain on us young guys who already are strapped for cash as it. | |
Superbike32 wrote:
There is plenty of file storage that works fine with BYOND if your just looking for somewhere to upload your project so it can be downloaded for local play. Mind linking some that work? I've not found any. Trust me I've tried a lot. | |
I've been able to get OneDrive, Box and DropBox all working for this. Pretty much anything you have to sign up for to use. On OneDrive it's the hardest to get a direct link, so I'd recommend one of the other two services.
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I'm not sure you're looking at the price correctly.
That's $24 USD per YEAR. YEAR. That's $2 a month. BYOND is essentially asking you $2 a month to gain additional features which BYOND isn't required to give you. What else do you need the $2 a month for? A candy bar? 1/3 gallon of gas? Get over yourself. It's a membership that allows you to do exactly what you want to do, direct file upload and cloud file storage. If you don't want those features, don't buy those features and buy/use someone else's file upload service instead. You wouldn't walk into WalMart and say "Geeze, that $1,500 50" HDTV is too expensive for me. We little guys can't afford that! So sell it to me for $2." and expect to walk away with a $1,500 for $2. Everyone has an equal opportunity to earn as much money as they want in life. That's what life's about. There's opportunities everywhere. 5.0 GB of direct-link file storage. Go find 5.0 GB of direct-link file storage for $2 a month with the same bonus features BYOND has. I dare you. Microtransactions in games would run you $24 a month for as much as BYOND games offer if everything on BYOND was on Steam or a Free2Play website. You have the ability to disable ads at a direct benefit for you and BYOND to thrive. You get to play games faster, and BYOND gets to keep those games published. You're essentially telling us that you want BYOND to shut down it's operations as the memberships and donations are an essential part of the website and servers to remain active. | |
I'm sorry the membership seems high to you. It isn't, really, when you look at what $24 gets you for a lot of other things, or consider that it's for a whole year. (And it hasn't gone up in a while.) But I understand how sometimes that's a lot, depending on where you are in life. From another perspective though, it's less than a week worth of morning coffee. A year's membership is less than the average person spends on fast food in a month.
The main benefit of membership--and I really can't stress this enough--is that the contributions of members are one of the major factors keeping BYOND going. This goes not only to a few perks, but to making sure BYOND can continue active development. | |
Maximus_Alex2003 wrote:
You're essentially telling us that you want BYOND to shut down it's operations as the memberships and donations are an essential part of the website and servers to remain active. If you saw how much they get in donations... It farrrrrr out weighs the amount in subscriptions. | |
Lummox, what about donations though? I saw you got thousands in donations. How much do you get from subs? I thought it was donations keeping this going.
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I was counting memberships and donations together, as does the fundometer. That's been falling short consistently; it isn't anywhere near a healthy level. Subs help a bit.
But Maxiumus_Alex is exactly right: Memberships and donations are essential. The prices aren't set the way they are out of greed. I'm only able to do the work I do because of those memberships and donations. | |
Hmm. Just gonna add to that I'm from New Zealand where that's $24 USD turns into $32 NZD
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Found a place to host my files, miraculously. When I'm rich trust me I'll donate some good $ but until then..
Trouble is that BYOND only takes direct file links. FTP basically. Free FTP is HARD to come by. | |
And that $32 NZD turns into $24 USD for BYOND.
The website and software doesn't thrive from magic, like Lummox is saying. Money is a major ingredient to any form of success in economical situations, such as BYOND and game making. Servers cost money. Employees cost money. If the website isn't able to afford servers, you'll have to publish your games yourself and market your games yourself (for example, because of BYOND, Google populates search results for many games on BYOND. This brings players in. More players is more publicity. More publicity is more potential profit. To keep buying servers, pay internet bills, rent, utilities, food, etc. game developers need profits. These profits also help to hire graphics artists, sound artists, programmers, etc. for major projects like Eternia: Roleplay, and even Space Station 13 has its fair share of hired programmers). If the software doesn't get money, people like Lummox aren't able to further develop the software to be able to let you publish games, for example the webclient and standalone. You'll have to create that yourself if BYOND ceases to exist. Are you fully capable of designing and programming network support and marketing for your demo that cost you $24 which included a vast ocean of included features (which are free and don't require purchase, but the purchases include extra bonuses)? And if someone has an issue with your standalone client or webclient are you able to assist them properly? BYOND helps handles these for you. Memberships and Subscriptions and Donations are a fundamental ingredient for the success and progress of BYOND which enables you to succeed and progress. Another key feature majority of people overlook is the fact that the Forums and Developers section exist. There's not a lot of free game developing software with integrated networking, integrated graphics editor, integrated map generating utilities, integrated interface creation capabilities, while still offering a surplus in community support, free resources, and the fact that your projects can be freely published for the entire world to download, and potentially purchase if you go that route. Yes, there are a variety of free game making software on the market. A majority, from experience, do not offer the same level of support of features BYOND does. Then there's the few that do, and without purchasing licenses or losing key integrated features like the ones listed in the previous paragraph, you're looking at spending roughly 10 - 50 times as much for the licenses and software than you are with buying 5 years of BYOND membership. Unity 5, for example, is $75 USD per MONTH for the Pro edition. That's $75 PER MONTH. P-E-R M-O-N-T-H. But that's the thing. You don't NEED to buy BYOND membership for a "Pro" edition. If your basing your existence on the website on the fact that you need to host a file for your demo, just use a direct-link file host. I currently use Drop-Box, although it is causing a direct-download issue and users need to download the .zip to open, there are many other alternatives than Drop Box. If you ABSOLUTELY need to, and you don't want to spend the money for membership, search your local Craigslist for a server computer on the cheap. I bought a 2005 Dell PowerEdge 800 for $25. CPU - Pentium 4 3.8 with Hyper-Threading, MEMORY - 1 GB DDR2, HDD - 600 GB 7200 RPM SATA. Once I re-install the OS I can easily run it as a server and have my own direct-link FTP hosting, and running it as a game server for the cost of my internet bill. | |
FTP is a different protocol entirely, a direct link means one thing basically, and that is if you upload a .zip file that the url would be http://website.com/file.zip type format. If it doesn't fit this format then it wont be usable.
So what service did you end up using because there are literally dozens here in the U.S. which work fine with it. | |
Superbike, you've still not pointed any out. I've been googling for hours. In the end I needed to get a free account for a webserver where I could upload files to it.
Give a link to 1 of those dozens of suitable sites or you're straight up telling fibs. | |
http://www.Dropbox.com works fine with BYOND.
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