| It's interesting that in your thoughtful survey of alternatives, you don't consider simply challenging the assumption "and provide updates forever". Subscriptions do indeed fund perpetual development in a way that one time purchases don't, but the implication that comes along with that is that features are to be added along the way. If you only released maintenance patches, you subscriber satisfaction would dry up really darn fast. So now we have this model where publishers charge subscriptions so that they can keep their business stable or growing, and subscribers are demanding features be added so that they're getting value for the ever-growing total cost of ownership. And what do you get from that? Feature Bloat. The subscription model insists that successful products need to continually grow their code base, complexity, and feature set. The idea of stable streamlined applications that do a few jobs really well and otherwise stay out of the way is very hard to sustain in a world of subscriptions. The alternative -- which was common in the past and remains common among many (not all) game publishers now -- is to temporarily expand your team payroll with talent that produces the product, and then scale it back to warranty the product with necessary maintenance patches while your emphasis turns to growing the market through sales instead of growing the product through features. Later, perhaps, you create another related product or a successor product. It can and does still work, and it can make for very high quality products that don't become bloated monstrosities. If subscription fatigue is making the news, I'm sure will see a resurgence of this model soon enough. |
Over the years I've noticed that many a software I once 1-off purchased is not supported anymore on my latest (security patched) OS. While technically possible, it's not practical to run that old software on the old OS (corporate security foo, old OS only running on unavailable hardware, etc). So I end up purchasing the next major version regardless of new features.
If we compare the two models in regards to "price for having access to the software for a long timeframe", you pay for compatibility/security updates either way, just in the purchase model the cost curve is a lot bumpier than in the subscription model.
As someone earning a big part of my income from self-developed SaaS subscriptions, I can tell you it's a life changer for my attitude. In the old model there was always this nagging voice in my head. "This customer support ticket is from a customer who last paid me 2 years ago and they don't have a support contract and who knows if they will ever buy the new version."
So while my general ethics are in favor of providing good customer support, the monetary incentives are really stacked against it on the purchase model.
In my experience customers don't want to hear about all the issues we deal with (lib updates, security patches, UI fixes, you people know the drill), they just want to know what the software can do for them and how much it will cost them to have access to it working for a certain amount of time.
Interested to see what others think!