$$$

[Blizzard]

So, how much money are we gonna charge?

There are 4 of us so $200 or $400 are the most reasonable options (maybe only $100 as well). Again, non-commercial projects can use ARC free of charge without limitations, commercial projects can use ARC without limitations, but a one-time fee has to be paid when the game is released. They don't have to pay the moment they start working on the game or finish the game. When they are 100% sure that their game is going to be released and sold somewhere, they have to pay us. That payment had to be done for every game when it's is released. It is paid only once per game, patches and updates to those games are free of charge. Expansions have to be paid only if they are packed with a new executable. If they are an update or patch for the original game, then it's free.

[Ryex]

I say $400 is fair.  think about it. if your going to sell your game what price do you think is most likely? somewhere between $2.00 and $5.00 is most likely I'd say.
at $2.00 200 copies of the game pay for the license at $5.00 80 copies pay for it. I don't know about you but if only 200 people bought my game I'd feel fairly disappointed and if it was only 80 I would be depressed. I'm fairly sure that any game worth selling is going to at least sell 400 copies. at $2.00 400 copies mean they've made $400 and at $5 they've made $1600. 

I totally agree that a one time fee to sell the game commercially should only be paid once the game is finished and ready for distribution.

I see this fee having two purposes. obviously compensation for using our work to make money. but also as a way to make sure that people make a game worth selling. if a game doesn't at least break even then it is a pretty sad game and shouldn't of been sold in the first place.

[ForeverZer0]

What Ryex said.

[Blizzard]

There's actually the factor of the publisher who takes 80%-90% of your money if you are an unknown developer, so somebody selling their game would actually have to sell 5-10 times more than you calculated. Still, that is their problem, not ours. I agree with $400 being a fair price. We can always lower the price if lots of people are interested and we want to attract more people.

[ForeverZer0]

Agreed, nothing is set in stone that we can't change later. We may have to adapt, but I would say that the $400 fee and conditions you mentioned for should work for now.

[G_G]

Now how are we going to "prove" that someone used our engine to create this game. I think a possible decryptor, a private one may I add, should be made for a reason like this. Probably not though. Then we run into the problem of people being honest. 200 dollars seems fair, and Tom didn't argue the fact that commercial licenses would cost 400 dollars. He himself said that would be no problem. Which also brings a question to mind...

I told Tom about the engine and I asked if he possibly had graphic or music composers that might be able to help in the future. And I told him if his team contributed enough to the RTP that I could see if he could get a commercial license for free. Just one of course. I'm sure you guys have some objections here but it was just a thought.

[Ryex]

proof should be easy enough. after all we can sign the assembly .

[Blizzard]

Yeah, it's easy enough to prove it. If there is a similar folder structure, the .exe and some other stuff, that's pretty much all the proof we need.
We don't mind giving out free licenses to people who contribute a lot. In fact I think that this might be a good way to get some people to make us some RTP resources.

[G_G]

As developers, how are we going to be priced for licenses? I mean I think it'd be fair if we each had our own license for free, but just one maybe. (Maybe infinite amount? :V) But I think of it this way, our 1st license is free, then maybe the rest our half off. Well not exactly half off since you'd only be paying 150 since you're really not going to give yourself 50 bucks. Anyways it only seems fair.

You make this awesome game. Get 2000 dollars off of it for examples sake. Oh hey I have infinite free licenses, I'm going to make another 2 grand on an engine I helped construct. I think it'd only be fair that the other three developers got paid for any other license after our first one. I'm not against having free licenses for whatever games, but I'm just saying what I feel is fair or not.

[Blizzard]

Well, I was thinking of free licenses for all of us. We made it after all. It would be kind of stupid to have to pay to use your own engine. Besides, I don't many of us will use this engine. I, personally, most probably won't.

Good that you thought of that so we can handle this conflict right away.

[ForeverZer0]

The way I look at it, if any of you 3 three want to put in the hard work and create a game and make some money at it using a completed ARC, then more power to you.  I highly doubt I ever will, but I would feel strange taking money from any of you, since you all each had a hand in creating it.

I think it is more unfair to not allow for free licenses. I liken it to having a wife where we both work to support the family, then I charge her money to fix the dryer.

[Blizzard]

Yeah, you put it nicely in words. I feel strange charging anything from you for using ARC and paying you for using ARC myself.

[ForeverZer0]

It seems on any site a post information about ARC aside from CP, one of the main things people bitch about is that $400 is too high a price. Now, I am not sure if this because you always have people who need to post a negative comment about anything and just want to bitch, or if it is a real issue. They somehow fail to see the the whole "but its free for non-commercial use" factor and want to argue, so it may be the former. Anyways, I had a thought on a possible alternative to post up a poll for everyone in the RM community.

Something along the lines of:

Would you rather...

• Use ARC for free, but pay $400 (USD) for each commercial license


• Pay $5 (USD) for ARC for non-commerical use, and pay $50 (USD) for each commercial license


• Pay $10 (USD) for ARC, for commercial and non-commercial use

Now, obviously the actual values can vary, but it was just ideas for different possible scenarios. I took at glance at the RPG Maker from Enterbrain coming out (what info that is available), and it seem like nothing more than re-hash of RMVX with a few added functions. It comes with a hefty price tag of $175 (USD), and doesn't look to even hold a candle to what ARC is. They may beat us in some of the RTP stuff, but the actual engine and editor will blow it away.

Either way, back on topic, I say we let the community vote to what they say is more fair. We are would need a fairly large number of polls to take any action about it, but this would be an option. I understand that this could possibly lead to us having to go back on the whole "free for the community" aspect that we want to keep, hence let them decide what they want.

One other note, although none of us started this to make money, charging a couple dollars for non-commercial use would likely be much more lucrative to us than the licenses, since many more people simply use RMs has a hobby, not means to make money.

[Blizzard]

If we offer ARC for anything else than free for non-commercial use, people will still pirate it. People won't pay even those $5, that's how people are. And if we charge non-commercial projects per release instead of a ARC usage license, it's almost impossible to keep track of all games that are released non-commercially. As you said, nobody of us got into this to earn money but rather to make an RM that blows Enterbrain out of the water. I am against any charge for non-commercial projects and for free usage of ARC without limitations unrelated to releasing a game.

People are bitching just for the sake of it. If somebody is being a dick, ask them if they want to make a commercial project. On any other answer than a 100% yes you can reply with "Then what's your problem? It's not like you have to pay if you aren't going to use it commercially." If they say that it's too expensive, tell them "You are not paying it. Why do you care?" and if they come back with something in the line of other people might this and that, blablabla, you just say "That's their problem, isn't it? You don't have to pay anything. I don't understand why you are upset that you don't have to pay anything.".
Even if they bitch about maybe selling it commercially, you can just say "Then you will MAYBE pay $400." You can even say "You don't have to pay until the very release of the game. If the projects gets canceled, you are taking no risk and don't have to pay anything."

If we make a poll, most people will vote even for free of charge either way. The ironic thing is that people who will never make a commercial game or aren't even thinking about making a commercial game will vote for the commercial license to be free. Basically we can't rely on a poll.

The only alternative that I see is to offer it for $200. In that case I we should offer it for $400 initially and make it %50 off for a "limited time" where "limited time" is not specified how long and we just keep the price there. Basically we are giving it for $200, but we're making people believe that it's on discount.

This model prevents pirating and makes ARC available to everyone.

The only variable we have here is the price for releasing a commercial game. And charging anything less than $200 is pointless. $200 is not much money. Even $400 is not that much money, but it's a pain threshold to keep out people with low quality games. People will always be bitching, we have to accept that. Besides, if we gave it all away for free, people wouldn't take it so seriously because it's "free". People will be bitching either way.

[Ryex]

took the words out of my mouth.

[Blizzard]

Also, if G_G will not be with us in the end, we can drop the price to $300 / $150 obviously.