Heads Up - Gamesparks changed their pricing plan and it's looking bad for indies.

Considering What photon offers, does to maintain and support you throughout; the "expensive" aspect can be quickly liquefied into IT running your servers in a way that's been battle tested over and over again, many times for years.. You don't stay on top hiring cheap staff so you can offer cutthroat prices, Theres a reason an Ubisoft studio trusts them, they're basically the Only AAA solution for that pricing, period.

So again, as an Indie i can't see anything wrong with any of these options, they've all got competition and only a few can boast premium service; for a premium fee of course

 

Because once you start making money, why just because you're an Indie should you pay less than the rest? You're making money! It's a fair setup, cheap startup- but once you're in the air with the rest of dev world, fairs fair.

 

With the Indie tier and the rest yes, Preview; as in once you start making money they get their fair cut for the services they provide.. I think we're all singing the same tune here. I don't disagree with any comments here..

 

do you work for Gamesparks or something

 

Personally I was using it and loving it, then they upped the pricing and completely forced me out. I went my own way and couldn't be happier not having to pay.

 

Has anyone here thought that maybe Amazon is becoming (or has long been) a monopoly? They seem to be branching their tendrils into every sector of the economy there is.

 

Hah. We're way past the "thought" stage. Amazon recently ended their contract with FedEx for handling ground delivery only to buy up 100,000 electric-powered delivery trucks a month later. Why pay a third party company when you can ship your own products yourself?

https://www.theverge.com/2019/8/7/20758346/fedex-amazon-ground-shipping-ending-contract
https://qz.com/1712151/amazon-orders-100000-electric-delivery-trucks/

 

That's a big assumption there. Having users != making money. A couple of things to consider here:

1. In many cases a business needs to get customers while they're still figuring out how to effectively monetise their product.

2. The Indie thing covered 100k MAU, right? For many games that might not be enough to make significant money anyway.

The old model helped attract startup developers by reducing the risks associated with early stage projects. Whether or not it's "fair", those developers are naturally going to look for the best deal they can get elsewhere now that things have changed.

 

Again, if they're providing you a reasonable environment for testing, and you decide to take the leap for live release you shouldint expect them to hold your hand and pay for your milk money, they're not bullying anyone out of money undeservedly just as photon isint for the pricing, because of what goes on to make their service hands down the easiest the get up and going..Need a cheaper alternative? Do what they do, yourself.
If you're not willing to take a risk even after testing through the early dev failsafe phase maybe this isint the industry for you, friend.

Again, If you find the pricing dosint serve you, there are others out there but as an Indie personally, For what they offer this hasint effected me negatively.


Being indie =/= being broke.

**Edit
No, i don't work for them.. i have no reason to jump on the hate wagon at this point.

 

WORKSFORME WONTFIX isn't really an answer here, especially when plenty of other people have left gamesparks for other services because of this pricing issue. This "hate train" you are talking about left the station back in April for good reasonand has been gone since until you decided to drag the train back after six months.

 

"WORKSFORME WONTFIX" K is that some kind of clever anime reference? In any case OP made a statement about gamesparks changing their pricing info, and they're no longer "indie friendly", I disagreed and shared my perspective on this being subjective as well as negative on the community as a whole placing everyone in the same financial bracket as a Student license... Now, does that mean lots of developers jumped ship to find cheaper wares? Yeah, bad thing? Nope.
It's just destructive to throw a wet blanket over all and any independent developer as if to say we're all financially unable to meet the fees, for what i have received and come to expect from them deem reasonable.. In this climate as the industry's tools grow and expand reaching new avenues the rates which you pay to have access to them do too, Free country; use whatever you think best, the comparable competition in my case was either not
offering what i needed, a hassle to setup or an issue like support or the like arrived and i get everything has an upside and downside. All i was saying was, in this case the topic title was false and unnecessary, just say "they raised the price" it's less harmful to the companies and businesses providing services to the likes of everyone, not exluding indies.

 

Im super confused as to what your point actually is? No-one is throwing a "wet blanket" over anything, people have simply mentioned that the pricing is not friendly to indies, which its not.

Im really not sure what your defending if you dont work for them, their pricing is pretty black and white? $299 a month is not indie pricing by any means, and costs far more than a unity license and almost any other "indie" priced monthly subscription product.

It also costs far more than any competitor. So again, no "wet blankets" have been thrown, rather the facts have simply been stated. If your happy to pay that then great, it doesnt stop it from not being indie friendly, it just means there is an indie who is happy to lose money on a service that costs less than 1/3 from almost every other competitor.

 

Again just like MOST indie developers would claim photon is overpriced as an example and yes in theory it IS 1/3 of the cost to run your own, but guess what's not included? The IT team running it for you, supporting your project, making it as simple and easy as possible to get going, and some are willing to pay a premium fee up-front instead of dealing with all the crumb fee you get taxed with along the way that do add up, and for a indie myself i choose to pay premium on something that's been battle tested.. to each their own, what is the wet blanket? Bashing justified prices. They're not the only ones charging that price, "Friendly" dosint have to mean the equivalent of a netflix subscription, is all i was saying. Goodbye.

 

Sure, except none of that is true. I have used photon and playfab, and many other users of this community have also. I would, and I know others would vouch for the fact that you get exactly that from those services too. So far you have yet to state anything that isnt offered by the competitors, all of it just sounds very opinionated tbh.

Also theres enough people who have used gamesparks here for us to know its not the "golden child" of SAAS that you claim it is. I have also tested gamesparks for about 2 months. The same issues that affect the others, affect gamesparks.

To be perfectly honest it mostly just sounds like your either trying to justify your own personal purchase to yourself, or are in some way affiliated with them. Anyway either way ,if your happy to pay a premium to recieve what most would call basic support, then good for you I wish I could throw away money like that too, but I prefer to ensure I get the best value for money.

 

I guess that means outsourcing is no longer cheaper than doing it yourself as has been common business practice for the past decade or so?

 

It's a reference to bug tracking statuses, which makes me wonder what the heck you're doing behind the scenes that you don't know that.

 

Outsourcing is normally done with a different country. Outsourcing to a company that is in your country is a different story and is generally done only because you can't handle the services they can without serious investment. Normal companies won't build their own delivery service.

 

Look into websockets and node. You can get a server on digital ocean for $5 a month.

 

Anyone else bothered by the incorrect use of contractions?

 

And then spend hundreds of hours developing and testing your own systems?
What about scaling them on demand?

I'll go with an existing solution thanks.

 

I agree entirely that it's not anyone else's responsibility to fund someone's project. But that's beside the point.

If I were to do a project where I needed that kind of service I woulnd't stop at the first one I found which offered a "fair" deal. There are loads of options out there, I'm going to compare every one I can find to see what gives me the best chance of and easiest path to success. That's not being unreasonable, it's just shopping around.

For what it's worth, price would not be my only consideration.

In the current environment many of their competitors have options which are more attractive to early startups. That doesn't mean that either party is being unreasonable. But just as GameSparks' offering can be whatever they want, each dev can pick whichever alternative makes the most business sense to them at the time.

Wait... haven't you already pointed out that doing it yourself isn't a cheaper alternative?

But it's a fraction of the real cost of doing this stuff at scale for yourself.

I thought that was @DJ_Design's underlying point: since GameSparks is still a fraction of the cost of doing it yourself it is therefore still a good deal. That's true in and of itself, and if examined in a vacuum it could even be a practical position to take. Thankfully we're not operating in a vacuum and there are plenty of competitors with seemingly better offers.

Also, once your game is profitably generating income the $299+ will probably be a relatively small item in your cashflow. For instance, consider that in comparison to having a single employee! The tricky bit is for startups bridging the gap between "not yet generating income" and "being profitable". (And it's possible that GameSparks wanted to help people do this, but it wasn't working out well enough to sustain itself.)

 

Lol yes that was my underlying point, people here seem to like to reach to whatever fits their bias.
The point i made there was if you can't appreciate the benefits that premium price brings you're better off trying to accomplish it yourself and learning the hard way.

 

Need i remind you that price gouging is an illegal activity in most states.. Chalking it up to "It's expensive so cheaper alternatives are better durr" makes as much sense as winning the lottery to buy a corolla. If you don't fit the bracket they're reaching, with the higher end level of service and infrastructure please by all means use other services that have a lower economic floor entry.. but this does not mean, it's not indie friendly- Sorry if that hurts anyone here.

 

See, with what i choose to pay for that you would consider "By no means Indie" i havint come to the destination of needing to know "behind the scenes" enough to know such a phrase so inherently, i would use it outside of it's contextual environment in order to make some sort of point. The issue is pricing, let me rephrase that; People who don't see the benefit of or cannot afford premium pricing have issue with pricing. The "wet blanket" again is saying all Independent developers, everyone, under the title "Indie" under any situation cannot and should not pay for premium features even below the AAA price bracket. When in fact Any Indie should know you can't rely on yourself to do everything, that's how things fall apart and come out half cooked, something Indies are Well known at doing. So you let others do the heavy lifting and focus on the reason you're in the industry in the first place, If that means paying a premium so be it.

 

@DJ_Design

Spoiler: Offtopic

I do not want to inject myself into this thread, but would you please not flood the forum? It is against the rules. Just answer all people in one post like @angrypenguin does for example. Thanks.

 

We understood the point you were trying to make - which is basically "you get what you pay for" - but you completely failed to understand our point. That a high price tag doesn't automatically equate to high quality.

 

I honestly would pay good money just to keep my privacy.

It is quite bothersome to think of the fact that whenever you go online on virtually any device anywhere you are not only identified, but data (which is information) regarding you and everything you do gets stored on a server somewhere --completely beyond your control. I'm not sure how the EU's new policy regarding data storage and retention is but all I've seen is a mad rush for websites and companies to implement compliant sites, when everywhere I go online asks me if I consent to cookies/storage of my information, and then if I don't I can't read/view the site in many cases.

Its obnoxious and really just an additional layer of red tape...

Again I would pay good $$$ to have my privacy as a product. If anyone can do that its google. Google has never had a breach as far as anyone knows (apart from government interference).

There's a saying about payment for things: "Pay peanut, get monkeys". You really do get what you pay for, and if you ain't paying you're having your information collected and shared, stored, and sold.

 

It's called VPN. It's quite handy. Especially if you buy some advanced one like PIA, those contains more elements to protect privacy.

I'm pretty much a Google fanboy, but:
https://www.experian.com/blogs/ask-experian/google-data-breach-what-you-need-to-know/
https://thenextweb.com/google/2014/...hed-google-says-evidence-systems-compromised/

With that said, they have the best engineers in the world and they have one of the most secure systems in commerce as well. Especially if we count the number of usage, endpoints, public APIs, services, etc.

 

I actually completely understood the point multiple people here attempted to make between their borderline passive aggressive remarks, I just don't agree with them in this particular case. You don't raise your pricing by hundreds of dollars and not add any substance, if people choose to jump ship before this realization that's on them, don't drag the industry down because you can't afford higher end licenses, it's unnecessary.

 

Yes, you do. It happens all the time. Here is one example that came up from a few seconds of searching.

https://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-senate-drug-price-study-20161221-story.html

 

Man could you just like, provide the entire quote instead of that? The G+ breach was not on my mind when I wrote that, and honestly I recall thoughts about my own knowledge of any breaches at Google.

Also: we just learned that NordVPN suffered a breach quite recently, and if I recall you did post in that thread... I do not trust some foreign company on-their-word. I understand that you have a point. There are technical limitations too which are not conducive to some purposes.

In this world you're in a catch 22 regardless. Choose a VPN wisely... see it possibly get breached or have it leak. Or have police/government snoop on you because they wonder why you think you need a VPN. -.-

 

What substance do you believe is being added in this case?

From what I can tell a bunch of people are less satisfied with it now than before. I don't know how much stock to put in that, since I don't use the service myself to know one way or the other and any significant change will always upset some portion of your customer base.

 

Amazon bought them out, Things change as old systems are thrown out. People hate change, and what they hate more is spending more money than they would elsewhere, So it's understandable nobody sees the substance in a price raise, are upset on how the transition went, losing the staff they used to get support from etc but considering who bought them out and what their other branches are doing in the industry it's safe to say this dip is justified, nowhere did i ask to be lead on a witch hunt i just hate Indies to always self brand as the little guys who have no money or wisdom to invest in higher end software because they didint get a student/"Indie" license. Bottom line is, when a company buys something in tech more cases than not they see the potential in it and with their own roots bring into it a new perspective with (in this case, Amazon..) a lot more financial backing behind the company.. For things like better staff, infrastructure and so on, things premium tags are calling for which i stand behind. Though again, understandable people are unsatisfied with the current situation..

I mean this is a game engine forum, Microsoft buying out minecraft? People hated it, But guess what? Microsoft has the resources to provide the content quicker, and more polished.. something a small studio can only do to a certain extent and for so long..

Yes, and he went to prison soon after but that aside, guess what i also read after a few seconds of searching? When they bought them out, There are actually situations you can get in a heat for NOT raising prices, i honestly think some people here (people in general) just love to hate on things collectively, without any inclination to look past the mob mindset of "higher prices bad!" and get both perspectives.

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/c...martin-shkreli-everyone-is-missing-the-point#

 

That doesn't answer the question..?

 

I was using photon for a project and I was running into a wall where it is unable to do something I needed it to do (sending video data which was causing me to get kicked). Then I started to look into photon for example and there was something about them struggling with 4 or more players per room which seems absurd. Personally I would rather develop something myself rather then rely on third parties...

https://doc.photonengine.com/en-us/realtime/current/troubleshooting/faq

 

Some dated info IIRC. i read a quote from 2015 basically saying it comes down to your game logic, so their higher end tiers that they have now are obviously going to be able to handle more than 4 players per room, i've run more than that myself on Realtime without issue it's not a problem if your plan can handle it, get in touch with someone on discord they might be around in unitys server if you don't have dedicated support, they're cool people. (and no, i don't work for them either). By all means if you're capable of doing it yourself i think it would be a rewarding experience overall but make sure you're working smarter not harder, why reinvent the wheel right.

I explained already what i think is behind the price raise, and why i think that's justified.
If you're going to cherry pick from what i said and ignore the context i can't help you bud.

 

If you want to play the long game I think learning to do as much as possible yourself is better. But to each there own. I actually enjoyed working with node its pretty fun

 

Anyone out there using Mirror?
I am thinking of moving my 2018.4.11 UNET based project to 2019.2.10 Mirror.
Although the reviews are great I just was wondering if anyone has tried it and didn't like it.

 

If you liked the now extinct uNet, Mirror should be your next choice without question; Great support although he's busy with other assets. Also constantly being updated, the author is using it to run his mmo framework and others, it's definitely a step up from what originally started as uNet.

 

Below are comments from a member that frequents the sections dedicated to networking and DOTS. I only remember them because it's from a thread where I previously recommended Mirror. These days I recommend checking out the networking framework in the FPS Sample by Unity.

https://forum.unity.com/threads/im-confused-what-replaced-unet.643606/#post-4318081 - basic don't use statement
https://forum.unity.com/threads/im-confused-what-replaced-unet.643606/#post-4319725 - slight follow-up
https://forum.unity.com/threads/im-confused-what-replaced-unet.643606/#post-4319818 - in-depth explanation

 

Is there anyone who can share his/her experience with https://getbraincloud.com/ ? Actually I'm an indie developer, first I decided to use GameSparks as BAAS however, I want to change the server before it is too late for me because of the pricing issues.

 

By Outsourcing I meant contract work/use of a third party. A ton of companies do this today to cut costs. Like the now defunct Amazon/FedEx partnership.