EClark1894 posted at 12:51PM Mon, 22 July 2019 - #4357668

Well, if all you're interested in is selling the content, then you may as well give out the fully functioning software for free.

That's a big "if", though. I think we can all agree that there have long been two main camps of users: those who just want to mix & match "content" and those who want to produce some portion of what they render/animate themselves. People who simply want to load pre-existing figures and props aren't going to want to pay for a platform to do that. They are the ones who will likely be buying the most content from the marketplace(s), and so it should be common sense to make getting on board as appealing as possible to attract as many of them as possible. Then you have people like myself who have hardly bought anything over the years. Sure, I've bought a few morph packs here and there. I've bought hair and and things like that on occasion as well, but I've not bought enough to call myself the kind of customer who keeps the content ecosystem thriving. But I will however pay for tools and features that allow me to make my own content more easily. The morph brush, the set-up and fitting rooms, physics... Those are the types of things my wallet opens up for, yet I accept that a fair portion of Poser's target audience never touches them. They may be indebted to their existence but don't want, need or want to need to use them themselves. Why charge those users for the features they will never use? Also, why give those features away for free when users like me will happily pay for them? I'll admit I long hated the idea of deliberately borked programs. I thought that if a feature was implemented it should be included, and particularly hated any program that added watermarks or limited output size. But I now feel there is nothing wrong with this if done properly. Reallusion were horrible about making it difficult to know which things their programs did out of the box vs. which required additional, often pricey, content. While they've gotten better in general, they still do things like selling their animation curve editor for $149. That's $150 for a plug-in that does one, albeit important, thing. Presumably people are using iClone and getting by without it. And if you did need it, I suppose you'd pay the asking price. It seems to me like something that should be included in the program, but if only a handful of people will ever need it should its cost be spread across everyone using iClone? These things don't develop themselves, the money has to come from somewhere.