ManyCam dishonored my lifetime license • Hacker News Board

Re: ManyCam dishonored my lifetime license

#191

Post by mschuster91 » Wed, Apr 12, 2023, 3:04 PM UTC

Someone1234 wrote: post #55

I just want to state outright that OP was wronged, and I side with them. That being said; I dislike both full subscription (i.e. breaks on expiration) and lifetime licenses. Subscriptions are too expensive for software that rarely gets major investment and lifetime licenses are dishonest (e.g. company cannot work for free, so their funded is based on unlimited growth, which isn't realistic for most). My current favor…

> That being said; I dislike both full subscription (i.e. breaks on expiration) and lifetime licenses. Subscriptions are too expensive for software that rarely gets major investment and lifetime licenses are dishonest (e.g. company cannot work for free, so their funded is based on unlimited growth, which isn't realistic for most).

There's two "lifetime" models, as you noted:

1. the good old way, provide someone an installer and a license key valid for this version and optionally older versions and N years of patches. Adobe used to do this with the Creative Suite, Microsoft did it for Office and does it for Windows, Atlassian does so for their datacenter and not-yet-expired self-hosting licenses and JetBrains does it for their IDEs as well.

2. "lifetime" as in "buy once, get upgrades in perpetuity". That one entirely depends on the business model of the developer. If it's just some hobbyist developing a piece of software because they want to solve a problem they have (e.g. Hyperswitch, SizeUp for Mac) or open-source developers, that's just fine - they do the work anyway for themselves but get a ton of coffee. If it's something MANY MANY MANY people want but the maintenance effort is low, something like the Slysoft/Redfox suite of DRM removal tooling, it can work out as well. The critical thing is something that needs a ton of ongoing maintenance... and most of these fail spectacularly or do rug pulls on their users.

Re: ManyCam dishonored my lifetime license

#192

Post by eps » Wed, Apr 12, 2023, 3:04 PM UTC

corndoge wrote: post #127

ejb999 wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

+1 for naming jetbrains - I have always liked their way of doing business, including the substantial discount to renew each year - even in years when I don't use their tools much, I renew. Also specifically like how they remind me many times , and many months in advance that they are going to charge my credit card on my renewal date - unlike the scumbag companies that never want to draw attention to your upcoming ren…

The key for getting a refund is to not deal with the company at all but rather initiate a credit card chargeback.

Chargebacks can be challenged and challanges can be won by the merchants, in which case you will end up with an attempted fraud on your bank record.

Re: ManyCam dishonored my lifetime license

#193

Post by account42 » Wed, Apr 12, 2023, 3:15 PM UTC

clnq wrote: post #156

asddubs wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the easiest way to communicate it is to just regularly increment your version number and then have people be able to buy version X. Like Photoshop, and really most software used to be sold.

Games still do it correctly. If you buy Spacewars you'll get patches and updates for a while, but you won't get Spacewars 2. Unfortunately, it is evident that the pay-once monetization model has been corrupted too. Many AAA game companies sell pre-orders and otherwise bet on people buying their games mostly on marketing and promises. Over the last decade in the AAA industry, marketing has steadily pushed out quality…

Games (at least AAA) have been moving towards live services where there is an ongoing reliance on the operator at least for multiplayer games. While often the main payment is still upfront there are typically ongoing revenue streams like batttle passes and other microtransactions. Thankfully this model has not yet been accepted for single player games.

Re: ManyCam dishonored my lifetime license

#194

Post by egoisticalgoat » Wed, Apr 12, 2023, 3:16 PM UTC

kevincox wrote: post #78

richrichardsson wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can understand you being pissed having paid for it, and I don't want to come across as a simp, but... if you play regularly enough to advance through the "rocket pass" you earn enough credits to pay the next season's pass. I only ever paid that one off £7.99 or whatever it was and always get far enough through. I guess it's a tax on people who either not very good or don't play often enough. Still sucks that going…

I don't think the problem is I paid for it and now it is free. That is not a big deal to me (but a small thank you something would be nice). The bigger issue is that they degraded the game because of the free players and subjected those who paid to the same ads and noise that you wouldn't expect from a free game. For example I paid for TF2 and don't really care that it is free now. They do give me an occasional crate…

I've had the same experience with other games that went F2P. If they at least upgraded customers who previously paid for the game to some kind of legacy ad-free version or something I'd be much more okay with it.

Re: ManyCam dishonored my lifetime license

#195

Post by fader » Wed, Apr 12, 2023, 3:18 PM UTC

KingOfCoders wrote: post #97

qikInNdOutReply wrote: post #12

The problem with such betrayal is, that companies names are all but smoke and mirrors by now. The reputational damage should be tracking with the leading employees. One customer betrayal travels along with the manager who caused it, to whatever company s/he touches. No matter how the company is named, no matter how much branding, one linked in api roll call later you know what you got.

We once used a large SaaS company with very bad service and very bad customer support. They changed their name and we joked they only did it so people googling them would not find the old stuff.

It's not without precedent. Comcast's response to being the most hated brand in the US for multiple years running was to keep everything exactly the same but rebrand their consumer division as Xfinity.

Re: ManyCam dishonored my lifetime license

#196

Post by ensignavenger » Wed, Apr 12, 2023, 3:18 PM UTC

Someone1234 wrote: post #55

I just want to state outright that OP was wronged, and I side with them. That being said; I dislike both full subscription (i.e. breaks on expiration) and lifetime licenses. Subscriptions are too expensive for software that rarely gets major investment and lifetime licenses are dishonest (e.g. company cannot work for free, so their funded is based on unlimited growth, which isn't realistic for most). My current favor…

Providing a benefit for a lifetime is something that companies do every day. The financial world calls such products a "perpetuity". (Or in some cases, an "annuity" because your life is not expected to last into perpetuity, but for a certain number of years.)

It is not difficult to calculate the net present value of such products so that you can charge the correct price. It is incompetent management that gets into these situations. The correct response from consumers is to file a small claims suit for a refund. And/Or apparently to blast to company loudly on social media :)

Re: ManyCam dishonored my lifetime license

#197

Post by jsmith45 » Wed, Apr 12, 2023, 3:20 PM UTC

dceddia wrote: post #102

Someone1234 wrote: post #55

I just want to state outright that OP was wronged, and I side with them. That being said; I dislike both full subscription (i.e. breaks on expiration) and lifetime licenses. Subscriptions are too expensive for software that rarely gets major investment and lifetime licenses are dishonest (e.g. company cannot work for free, so their funded is based on unlimited growth, which isn't realistic for most). My current favor…

From the developer side I feel like this type of license makes the most sense to me too. After selling a desktop app with a license like that for a little while though, I’ve also unfortunately realized that not everyone understands it. I had a number of customers referring to it as a “subscription” (which it wasn’t, because it didn’t auto-renew and you could keep using the last version forever) or “lifetime” (which i…

The easy way to explain it is to have obviously versioned releases. These could infrequent Like yearly, through to fairly frequent like monthly. (Out of cycle hotfix releases should probably just be treated as free for anybody with a license to the relevant base release.)

Then you are selling Lifetime licenses to a specific version (like 2023.04), which incudes free cost licenses to any versions released in the next X months. Advertised as "Lifetime license to 2023.04, and free updates for X months" (or X years, etc as applicable).

You can also choose to sell paid upgrade licenses which are identical to the main offering, except less expensive, and require the purchaser to own a license to some older version. The discount could potentially even scale depending on how old the old version is, but that usually makes more sense when no new releases were provided for free.

Re: ManyCam dishonored my lifetime license

#198

Post by account42 » Wed, Apr 12, 2023, 3:20 PM UTC

dceddia wrote: post #135

jjnoakes wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why can't you release features whenever you like under this model?

I was thinking if the model is: buy Version 1 for $99... then next year, Version 2 is out with lots of new features for the upgrade price of $79 -- well, then nothing really stops you from releasing new features under Version 1, but at some point you kinda have to hold something back for Version 2, or there won't be any reason to upgrade. So it shifts the incentives toward holding back big new features, and away from…

That really depends what timeframes you need to be working with. Adding new features to version n for free still incentivizes users of version < n to pay for the upgrade.

Re: ManyCam dishonored my lifetime license

#199

Post by moi2388 » Wed, Apr 12, 2023, 3:23 PM UTC

dahart wrote: post #158

crazygringo wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd say it's dishonest in the sense that a company knows the probabilities are such that they can't actually ever truly support a lifetime license, so it's a lie from the start. At the end of the day, companies usually go out of business or else sell themselves to another company within a certain number of years. And a new company (like in this case) may change their mind about lifetime licenses, because it's a total…

Ugh, please don’t make it worse and escalate to “lie”. You’re blaming the wrong source, and have it backwards IMO. The previous owners weren’t lying, the new owners are the ones to blame for breaking a pre-existing contract with the company. Breaking this contract might not be legal, and in that sense they may be only the ones lying.

Right. Sell it and somehow you have no responsibility.

Re: ManyCam dishonored my lifetime license

#200

Post by mnw21cam » Wed, Apr 12, 2023, 3:27 PM UTC

mannykannot wrote: post #159

rarkins wrote: post #101

Visicom really pumped the ManyCam lifetime upsells. I found 15 emails over an 18 month period in 2020-2021 with them pitching lifetime (which I eventually bought). An example email text they used is: > Upgrade now to ManyCam Studio Lifetime for only $39 and get access to all the future versions and updates, forever! What they presented to the user was unequivocal. In a just world, the company who sold ManyCam (Visico…

That pumping might have been seen as a warning that the company either does not intend to support the product much longer, or has doubts that it will be able to do so. And while I agree with your final sentence, unless Visicom was careless, the actual license agreement, which supersedes the promotional claim, will have permitted what happened and so essentially revoked the offer. Caveat emptor!

Not in a large number of countries in the world.