lifetime


monkeye
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Lifetime payments for clients are a highly unsustainable business model that cannot be used effectively by economically rational people.

 

Have you ever wondered why "Lifetime Spotify" sites seem to so often be exit scams? Or why Minecraft clients seem to have such a short lifespan? It all comes down to the fact that they accept lifetime payments for monthly work. Let's say that you're a worker, and every day, you work for your 8 hour day, and then you go home. You'd expect to be paid hourly for that work, right? Consider what would happen if you were paid once at the start of your job. You'd want to stop working immediately. After all, there would be no point - you had already made all the money you were going to make from your job. The same thing happens with Minecraft clients. Onetap, Skeet, and most other CS:GO clients tend to be monthly payments, which is why they exist for so long. But in Minecraft, it seems like every few days, there's a new client that you never hear about again. The problem isn't that the client is bad, the problem is that working on a client after the surge of payments that happens early on is just not a great idea, just like the worker analogy that I mentioned a few sentences ago. One counterargument that you might hear is that client developers get paid for selling more copies, hence providing a monthly payment system once you consider the user base as a whole instead of just a single user. This means that if they keep working on the client, they keep getting money. Even though that is true, it doesn't follow that client developers should keep working on the clients they made. Eventually, the people who want the client will all have bought it, and once that happens, there's no point in continuing to develop the cheat, because the developer has made all the money they are ever going to make out of the client. This unsustainability is very akin to a Ponzi scheme. A Ponzi scheme is a form of exit scam in which the original investors are paid back with the new investors' money. In a Ponzi scheme, once the money stops flowing, it is impossible to continue to sustain the business, so the people who run the Ponzi scheme flee to some foreign country where they can live in peace with their money. The same unsustainability shows itself within other scams, such as pyramid schemes, and, ultimately, cheats. Having that background, there are multiple specific reasons why all clients should be monthly. Firstly, as stated before, it is much less rewarding to exit scam on a client with monthly payments. This means that not only do consumers win, because they pay only for when they need, use, and want the client, but it is also beneficial for developers. Developers will get paid much more money with a monthly model than with a lifetime model, as long as they properly develop the client. For example, if every Astolfo user were to only pay monthly for a year, and they paid five dollars per month, then zarzel would have made 1.5x his current profit, or twenty additional dollars per Astolfo copy. Another great reason to switch to a monthly model is that it fosters competition. If each client has a fickle user base that is ready and able to switch to any client at any time, which is what happens when they all pay monthly, then clients have to actually compete to stay on top and outrank the other clients. If they didn't do that, the client developer would lose their monthly payers as they moved over to the new, cool client. All of these reasons mean that having a monthly payment model for clients is great for every person except scammers. But fuck scammers.

 

TL;DR

Astolfo can only end by exit scamming and lifetime payments are a recipe for disaster

Edited by monkeye

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I see where you're coming from, but I think you're misinterpreting "lifetime", as well as possibly making assumptions about the developers' mindset. 
To start, the usage of the word "lifetime" is not meant to be reflective of the purchaser, but rather the purchased product. When you buy Astolfo, or any other client, you're not inherently owning it, you're purchasing a right to use it. Astolfo is a live service. And during the "lifetime" of the service, you'll have access to it.

 

Quote

Consider what would happen if you were paid once at the start of your job. You'd want to stop working immediately. After all, there would be no point - you had already made all the money you were going to make from your job.

This is assuming the mindset of the worker to only be focused on income from the work and not the work itself. Often the people who are the best at their job are the people who enjoy doing it the most. There's also altruism and a sense of honor that people have. Although this is just an anecdote, I think it applies here as well that it feels good to be proud of your own work. 

Quote

 Eventually, the people who want the client will all have bought it,

This is not necessarily true. Even though there isn't a limited amount of people that could use the client since it's not a physical object, the client stays invite only. This faux-scarcity is a marketing strategy to increase demand for the product on the premise of "I don't wanna be the one without it." Since people can only purchase after an invite or applying, it slows down the flow of income so that all total purchases are stretched out over a longer period of time.

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10 minutes ago, catch said:

I see where you're coming from, but I think you're misinterpreting "lifetime", as well as possibly making assumptions about the developers' mindset. 
To start, the usage of the word "lifetime" is not meant to be reflective of the purchaser, but rather the purchased product. When you buy Astolfo, or any other client, you're not inherently owning it, you're purchasing a right to use it. Astolfo is a live service. And during the "lifetime" of the service, you'll have access to it.

 

This is assuming the mindset of the worker to only be focused on income from the work and not the work itself. Often the people who are the best at their job are the people who enjoy doing it the most. There's also altruism and a sense of honor that people have. Although this is just an anecdote, I think it applies here as well that it feels good to be proud of your own work. 

This is not necessarily true. Even though there isn't a limited amount of people that could use the client since it's not a physical object, the client stays invite only. This faux-scarcity is a marketing strategy to increase demand for the product on the premise of "I don't wanna be the one without it." Since people can only purchase after an invite or applying, it slows down the flow of income so that all total purchases are stretched out over a longer period of time.

1. Yeah, you're purchasing it for the lifetime of the product. That incentivizes people to make the lifetime of the product as short as possible.

2. Yes, altruism is a good exception to the rule. It really doesn't happen all that often, and even the most work-loving person is going to get bored at some point.

3. Not all clients are invite-only. Also, invite-only in the way Astolfo does it drastically reduces the number of people who will ever get access to the client. Plus, applications can accept an unlimited number of users, and there are still points at which Astolfo gains less users per day.

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On 10/26/2020 at 2:11 PM, monkeye said:

Lifetime payments for clients are a highly unsustainable business model that cannot be used effectively by economically rational people.

 

Have you ever wondered why "Lifetime Spotify" sites seem to so often be exit scams? Or why Minecraft clients seem to have such a short lifespan? It all comes down to the fact that they accept lifetime payments for monthly work. Let's say that you're a worker, and every day, you work for your 8 hour day, and then you go home. You'd expect to be paid hourly for that work, right? Consider what would happen if you were paid once at the start of your job. You'd want to stop working immediately. After all, there would be no point - you had already made all the money you were going to make from your job. The same thing happens with Minecraft clients. Onetap, Skeet, and most other CS:GO clients tend to be monthly payments, which is why they exist for so long. But in Minecraft, it seems like every few days, there's a new client that you never hear about again. The problem isn't that the client is bad, the problem is that working on a client after the surge of payments that happens early on is just not a great idea, just like the worker analogy that I mentioned a few sentences ago. One counterargument that you might hear is that client developers get paid for selling more copies, hence providing a monthly payment system once you consider the user base as a whole instead of just a single user. This means that if they keep working on the client, they keep getting money. Even though that is true, it doesn't follow that client developers should keep working on the clients they made. Eventually, the people who want the client will all have bought it, and once that happens, there's no point in continuing to develop the cheat, because the developer has made all the money they are ever going to make out of the client. This unsustainability is very akin to a Ponzi scheme. A Ponzi scheme is a form of exit scam in which the original investors are paid back with the new investors' money. In a Ponzi scheme, once the money stops flowing, it is impossible to continue to sustain the business, so the people who run the Ponzi scheme flee to some foreign country where they can live in peace with their money. The same unsustainability shows itself within other scams, such as pyramid schemes, and, ultimately, cheats. Having that background, there are multiple specific reasons why all clients should be monthly. Firstly, as stated before, it is much less rewarding to exit scam on a client with monthly payments. This means that not only do consumers win, because they pay only for when they need, use, and want the client, but it is also beneficial for developers. Developers will get paid much more money with a monthly model than with a lifetime model, as long as they properly develop the client. For example, if every Astolfo user were to only pay monthly for a year, and they paid five dollars per month, then zarzel would have made 1.5x his current profit, or twenty additional dollars per Astolfo copy. Another great reason to switch to a monthly model is that it fosters competition. If each client has a fickle user base that is ready and able to switch to any client at any time, which is what happens when they all pay monthly, then clients have to actually compete to stay on top and outrank the other clients. If they didn't do that, the client developer would lose their monthly payers as they moved over to the new, cool client. All of these reasons mean that having a monthly payment model for clients is great for every person except scammers. But fuck scammers.

 

TL;DR

Astolfo can only end by exit scamming and lifetime payments are a recipe for disaster

I feel like Dabber is trying to get more money out of Astolfo as a reseller even though he chose to sell and barely making any profit. If Zarzel, Voltz, & Milse wanted to go to subscription they could but they haven't. I can't tell about whether they would do it in the future or how it would apply to people who have bought "lifetime access" to the client before it became subscription based. I doubt they intend to exit scam any time soon as they are working on a rewrite for other versions of minecraft with Milse as a dev for the launcher & client with Voltz and Zarzel working on their parts respectively.

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23 hours ago, Triangle said:

I feel like Dabber is trying to get more money out of Astolfo as a reseller even though he chose to sell and barely making any profit. If Zarzel, Voltz, & Milse wanted to go to subscription they could but they haven't. I can't tell about whether they would do it in the future or how it would apply to people who have bought "lifetime access" to the client before it became subscription based. I doubt they intend to exit scam any time soon as they are working on a rewrite for other versions of minecraft with Milse as a dev for the launcher & client with Voltz and Zarzel working on their parts respectively.

im not advocating for lifetime subscriptions on astolfo at all. im just making a general statement about clients as a whole. zarzel just so happens to not exit scam, so lifetime is an okay solution. in fact, a client being monthly is more work for me, and id rather give up a small amount of profit than do more work. to be perfectly honest, i wrote this because i felt like writing a large block of text and saying that astolfo is an exit scam because haha funny

Edited by monkeye

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