Has the recession made mod and software authors greedy?

Because I'm pretty sure the amount of paid modifications and forum software was a lot lower a couple of years back, and I'm curious to whether it's tied to the general financial situation in the world at the moment. As if because of the money issues, everyone's lost the attitude of goodwill they once had and is seemingly willing to screw everyone else over at all costs.

So what do you think? Has the recession made modification and software authors greedy, and made them both hike up prices and charge for more things that would have been free in the vBulletin 3 days?

 

I think it takes a lot of time and energy to make quality mods and authors should charge what the feel they need to charge. Buyers should buy what they feel they need to buy. Having a mod for your forums is not a right it is a privilege. Everything that has a price on it has gone up and does so every year.

 

I'm fine with paying for quality modifications. The problem is that many of them are not quality. Some of the most popular mods are ones that generate ridiculous numbers of queries and use asinine amounts of resources. Shoutboxes, awards mods, arcades, etc. all fall into the resource hog category. I wouldn't pay for anything that makes my site slower. And, for the record, vBSEO is a complete waste of money.

 

Coders deserve to make money from their labor, too. My beef is with companies that try to get people to essentially rent their software instead of being able to purchase it outright.

 

Maybe; I don't know how much modifications were quite some time ago, but I've noticed many that I find to be "expensive".

vBulletin DBTech modifications are very good and I use many of their lite versions on my forum; I honestly wouldn't mind paying for the mod pro versions but I really cannot afford to keep spending money at the moment. Also I don't think the pro versions come without branding.

 

This is really a different type of question, I think it is may be but not high. Recession impact is higher worldwide and IT industry effective quite more, all IT professionals including software authors are facing bad time and greedy is also an impact of that but not at higher level as my point of view.

 

I think they are people are charging so much themes, mods and forum softwares like £130 for ipb or whatever it may not seem expensive to some people but its not really for forum software you could get more important stuff.

 

I think that developers who used to create and maintain mods in their spare time and are now out of work or making less money at their 9-5 figure hey I could be making money in my spare time. That's nothing wrong with that.

Giving back to the community is all well and great but there comes time when supporting these mods becomes more of a job than fun thing. That time is different for everyone. When it's a job you have to start charging or you'll burn out.

For my part, I don't mind paying for mods. I do mind paying for mods then having to pay extra to have branding removed. I'm already supporting you by paying for your product why gank me for extra money.

 

I don't think so if some one put time and effort into a mod they should be rewarded. Not only that have a look around the world. I just went to Toys Rs yesterday and it cost me $25 for two small superman action figures.

Greg

 

Just economics really... how many hours do add-on developers spend making them and then supporting them? If someone can realistically do it better/cheaper, someone will.

So far, every third party add-on I installed, I also purchased (although it's just one... the Enhanced Search for XF). Beyond that, it made more sense for me to code my own stuff vs. even the free stuff that in some cases did the same thing.

 

I think to a large extent people underestimate the costs involved in creating, supporting and updating a mod.

To create a decent mod, just coding time, is at least 40 hours. For every customer you have to budget about 10 mins support time. In reality most customers will require 0 support, but some will require hours upon hours. You really need to spend another 10 hours or so updating/fixing your mod each month, on average.

Over the course of a year then, we can add up the costs - 160 hours for a mod. Just to be at a basic $10 per hour rate, the developer needs to make $1600, plus another $10 for every 6 customers. So how many copies does he have to sell to reach that point?

Well if he charges $10, he has to sell 186 copies. There are only a small number of companies that can sell 200 or so copies of a mod in a year. Getting 200 people to pay for a mod in a year isn't easy.

If he charges $40 instead, that equation changes a bit, to more like 50 copies. That's much more plausible, and possible.

Basic economics dictates that you need to charge enough so you're making money - or at least, not losing money. In the forum market just now, that generally means aiming for 50-100 sales.

Bear in mind that 160 hours is only for a smallish, infrequently updated mod as well. If it requires research (Digitalpoint's mod improving search functionality is a great example of a mod that probably went through scores or hundreds of hours of research, testing, tweaking and re-testing) you can easily add dozens of hours onto that.

 

Many hundreds of hours have gone into it... the initial writing, then after the fact when we started adding additional searchable content types, etc.

Originally it was only intended for in-house use because we needed it, but yeah... enough people begged their way to making me put it out there.

 

+1 with Decado's comments. Global financial crisis has forced a market correction in pricing for many services online in general including mods. Prior to GFC, alot of mods would of been under priced.

Yeah Shawn - vB4 Sphinx Search is awesome.. saved alot of large vB forum's bacon

 

Never charged a penny for any of my mods.

I wish I had $10 for every one who used them, Id probably have retired by now.

 

I'm a nerd daddy now so all my addons will increase 1000%
(BTW it must be a sign, that it's on the same day, like the XF 1.2 release )

 

I think it is the natural evolution of the industry. Developers are getting better and better and the software are getting more and more complex. So, for someone to spend time and effort to be even good enough produce quality extensions, plug-ins or add-ons will be, over short or long, much happier, when he or she gets rewarded for their efforts. Although, money alone is NOT what will motivate them the most. Being part of a bigger and successful cause, for instance, can motivate them more to produce something for little or no monetary reward.

I always refer back to this one video, when I see similar discussions. It is pretty cool and answers the whole, "why do people work on stuff for free" question.



Scott

 

It's not even so much having to pay for the mods, it's the fact some people charge ridiculous prices for the simplest of things

1. There is an Alerts addon that i was going to buy but for 10 dollars...Really? That's okay.
First of all, that should ALREADY be in Xenforo's core where similar alerts for profile likes, post likes and profile post comments are grouped together.

Secondly, i don't see that add-on being worth 10 dollars.

2. 10 dollars for another add-on JUST to filter out alerts from people you are following...Really?


For such complex add-on i can understand people charging for them and charging high prices but certain add-ons are ridiculously priced. And don't get me started on Styles.

Some designers are good where they bulk the light/dark versions of the styles together...Which is fair.
Why should I pay twice for the same style that just has a small tweak(One is light, one is dark).

And then some people will charge 10-15 dollars and all they did was change the color of the software's default skin and add a couple of icons(if they even do that).

I do think developers should be able to charge whatever they feel they should charge but I also do believe a lot of them are greedy or maybe there is a bit of ego at play...idk. But i know as much as developers are free to charge what they wish, I do know i also have the right as a consumer NOT to purchase it.

Which is why you see quite often on XF "Sales" for the item as some kind of special offer. It's no special offer...you couldn't sell it at the price you originally tried to so now you marked it down lol.

 

If you are looking for any greedy people , i will nominate board owners for that spot.

They always want everything free or so cheap prices. They feel developers owe modifications to them just because they pay for a forum software.

 

It depends, I think the best quality modders are actually the least greedy and the hacks are the most. A good quality mod is usually worth the money being asked.