- The BYOND software is, and always will be free to download and use. End of story.
- Non-members will still be able to see if their friends are online in the pager. There is no change here.
- Non-members can still come to the website and see all live games. There is no change here.
- Non-members will be able to see a selection of live games directly in the pager. This is a new feature.
The only new restrictions for non-Members will be:
- Non-members will only see their friends' status as "[online]". They will not see where their friends are.
- Non-members will not be able to initiate instant message conversations in the pager. However, if a Member sends a message to a non-Member, the non-Member will be able to respond and hold a normal conversation with that Member. So if your friend is a Member and you are not, your friend can send you a message and then you guys can talk normally over the pager.
As I said in the announcement, we're adding these two restrictions for non-Members because they are non-essential features (you can still play all games, find games, see who's online, etc) and because they tax our servers quite a bit at peak times during the day. We debated about this for a long time, and felt that this was a reasonable compromise to make sure that BYOND itself doesn't go under due to rising load and server/bandwidth costs. Members will simply help pay for a feature that costs us money to provide. And who knows, we may always change things in the future, but this is the current plan.
Any and all feedback is welcome, just please understand what the current plan is before complaining about it. :) Thanks!