From The Blog: Paid plugins go live in the Corona Marketplace

[CoronaBot]

The Corona Marketplace has been offering free plugins for some time, and now we begin a new phase with our first set of community-developed plugins available for purchase. At this time, the marketplace is open to the following subset of developers who have agreed to test our new system before we open it up to all plugin developers.

QR Scanner – Sergey Lerg / Spiral Code Studio
Being able to scan QR codes was one of the most requested features. Sergey’s plugin makes it really easy to scan a QR code and get the text string it represents into your Corona app.

PayPal – Danny Glover / InfuseDreams
Corona developers already have support for selling virtual goods though the various Corona in-app purchase libraries, but having the ability to sell real-world goods has been limited. Now you can integrate PayPal, the leader in real-world real-goods transactions, into your app. This plugin also features card scanning on some devices, payments, authorizations, subscriptions, and more.

Replay Kit – Scott Harrison / scottrules44.com
Replay Kit allows you to record screen video and audio, including voice from your iOS 9 or iOS 10 device. When you’re done with your recording, you can save it to your camera roll or share it. For iOS 10 users, there is also a broadcast feature that lets you share video between broadcast-enabled apps that the user has installed on their device.

luaproc – Steven Johnson / Xibalba Studios
This plugin allows you to have “Lua processes” that let you run expensive or blocking operations in parallel with the main process thread. These processes can communicate with each other and you can distribute complex tasks across multiple processes, combining results at the end.

In summary

Head over to the Corona Marketplace, see these excellent additions to our plugin library, and help these entrepreneurial developers maintain these wonderful additions to your toolkit!

View the full article

[jch_apple]

Can we have an idea of plugin potential market ? Number of active Corona developers for instance. This could encourage people to develop plugins (it obviously more interesting to spend some hours with 100 000 potential buyers than 100 of them)

[graham07]

OK, so at the likelihood  that I’ll get hung drawn and quartered for this post, I thought I should write it!

While I support the ‘paid plugin’ philosophy, I have a few concerns, some of which can’t be resolved. I couldn’t find any real discussion or questions on the forums, so I thought I’d create one.

An important note, I am just a small hobbyist mobile developer with mostly free apps but aspire to greater things in the future!

I also used another platform for mobile development, and bought several plugins there. I found several problems.

1. The didn’t quite do what they were supposed to, or weren’t fully functional. Can’t get a refund, developer wouldn’t (couldn’t) change it. Not being able to try before you buy caused a few issues. These I could not resolve, you eat the purchase cost.

2. Bought plugins, and an OS change happened, developers didn’t update their plugins and they failed. Is there a process in place to protect developers from this?

3. Numerous plugins were released that were ripped from somewhere else and just released in the market place . It filled the marketplace with plugins that worked initially, but started failing after release changes. People had to start documenting fixes since the developers wouldn’t fix them.

Other comments, issues and concerns…

I realize that it takes time and money to create these plugins and developers should be able to cover those costs. 

Having ‘subscription based’ will kill some of them for me. I like to play around with plugins and may not use them for 8-12 months (if at all). Having to pay for it again will be disappointing. If it was $2, then who cares, but if I used 3 @$25, that’s $75 for an app I might still be writing. Since I’m a hobby dev, to be honest my app probably won’t make $75 a year. So that negates it.

Changing old plugins to paid.  This one kind of bites. I noticed a number of plugins I previously had ‘disappeared’, and now re-appeared as paid items that I no longer have activated. Since i had already activated them, it is disappointing that they just disappear. While the code may be deprecated, in theory the original developer ‘could’ have just rereleased it as is and charge for it. While that IS their right as they wrote it, I feel like someone stole my candy. It feels that it could like a money grab than anything for some. I know many have been greatly enhanced.

I *DO* like the idea of some phenomenal plugins, but as they are adopted, I still worry about their continued support and functionality. I appreciate that Corona is used by a lot of professionals and a $25 yearly plugin is inconsequential, but that is for them. For the small hobby guy, it’s a bit of a stretch by the time he adds in the other 3 $25 subs, and the 2 $20 subs for the boy scout app he made. He suddenly has to cover $140 for his free apps (as well as Apples dev fee). Again, I know we don’t HAVE to buy the plugin, write it ourselves etc but we know that we won’t.

I do recall recently reading where Ed (Roaming Gamer) I think is creating a plugin (Math perhaps), but he’s leaving the original as free and available, and a souped up version will have a cost associated. That I thought was a grand plan. I’d even like to see short samples of items if I could.  EG: The QR Scanner, could a free version only allow 1 scan with a message. That way you can write the app, but can’t compile it practically?  That way we could at least see what it can do, code around it and purchase it when ready.

I will be purchasing some, sure. I’m not saying charging is wrong. Maybe, if you aren’t going to support it any more make it free and unsupported perhaps?

My apologies if I insult anybody, that’s not the intention. Just thinking out loud. 

I think my final thought is that just because you CAN charge for a plugin, doesn’t mean you should… 

[Scott_Harrison]

1. If the plugins don’t do what they are supposed you should read the docs to help you understand what the plugins do. If there is a bug, let the creator know. I get lots of emails and bug reports on forum, I get them fixed with in like 2 days usually faster. Also read lerg support thread and he responds very fast.

2. You may want to contact the developer via forums or email. If no response after a couple weeks then I think it is ok to Contact corona support.

3. Please report in store plugins forum section.

I like the idea of users being able to use my plugin to test. Lerg put a lot of work into these plugins. I think it is unpractical to have a lite version of the qr scanner to have take care of. I think plugin developers with face competition down the road and prices will go down and quality will have to improve.

[Scott_Harrison]

I know the transition from free plugins to paid plugins is hard to chew but money helps support corona and plugin developers. Also plugins help corona put their resources to the engine.

[rob]

Hi Graham, I’m going to try and address your questions though I will be answering in generalities as I can’t speak for the developers submitting plugins.

1. Actually we do support refunds within limits. They are documented in sections 4.5 and 4.6 of the EULA you agree to by purchasing the item. The link is currently visible on the page that comes up when you click in the Buy button.  We are going to add a FAQ and more links to get to things and provide more visibility to those kinds of questions.

2 & 3 have basically the same answer. It’s up to the developers to keep their documentation and plugins up-to-date. I’m sure if we get enough reports about an old plugin not working any more and the developer isn’t responding, we would remove it from the store until it gets updated. But given the number of updates, some plugins will fall into disrepair at different rates than others and we hope the developers keep them up to date. 

Plugins require maintenance, some more than others. If the plugin maker feels they need to stay on top of a plugin that subject to frequent updates, having continual funding makes it worthwhile to maintain the plugin. If you don’t need it going forward, you can cancel the subscription but most people using these plugins will want to maintain their apps and it makes the subscription worth it.

Rob

[jch_apple]

Can we have an idea of plugin potential market ? Number of active Corona developers for instance. This could encourage people to develop plugins (it obviously more interesting to spend some hours with 100 000 potential buyers than 100 of them)

[graham07]

OK, so at the likelihood  that I’ll get hung drawn and quartered for this post, I thought I should write it!

While I support the ‘paid plugin’ philosophy, I have a few concerns, some of which can’t be resolved. I couldn’t find any real discussion or questions on the forums, so I thought I’d create one.

An important note, I am just a small hobbyist mobile developer with mostly free apps but aspire to greater things in the future!

I also used another platform for mobile development, and bought several plugins there. I found several problems.

1. The didn’t quite do what they were supposed to, or weren’t fully functional. Can’t get a refund, developer wouldn’t (couldn’t) change it. Not being able to try before you buy caused a few issues. These I could not resolve, you eat the purchase cost.

2. Bought plugins, and an OS change happened, developers didn’t update their plugins and they failed. Is there a process in place to protect developers from this?

3. Numerous plugins were released that were ripped from somewhere else and just released in the market place . It filled the marketplace with plugins that worked initially, but started failing after release changes. People had to start documenting fixes since the developers wouldn’t fix them.

Other comments, issues and concerns…

I realize that it takes time and money to create these plugins and developers should be able to cover those costs. 

Having ‘subscription based’ will kill some of them for me. I like to play around with plugins and may not use them for 8-12 months (if at all). Having to pay for it again will be disappointing. If it was $2, then who cares, but if I used 3 @$25, that’s $75 for an app I might still be writing. Since I’m a hobby dev, to be honest my app probably won’t make $75 a year. So that negates it.

Changing old plugins to paid.  This one kind of bites. I noticed a number of plugins I previously had ‘disappeared’, and now re-appeared as paid items that I no longer have activated. Since i had already activated them, it is disappointing that they just disappear. While the code may be deprecated, in theory the original developer ‘could’ have just rereleased it as is and charge for it. While that IS their right as they wrote it, I feel like someone stole my candy. It feels that it could like a money grab than anything for some. I know many have been greatly enhanced.

I *DO* like the idea of some phenomenal plugins, but as they are adopted, I still worry about their continued support and functionality. I appreciate that Corona is used by a lot of professionals and a $25 yearly plugin is inconsequential, but that is for them. For the small hobby guy, it’s a bit of a stretch by the time he adds in the other 3 $25 subs, and the 2 $20 subs for the boy scout app he made. He suddenly has to cover $140 for his free apps (as well as Apples dev fee). Again, I know we don’t HAVE to buy the plugin, write it ourselves etc but we know that we won’t.

I do recall recently reading where Ed (Roaming Gamer) I think is creating a plugin (Math perhaps), but he’s leaving the original as free and available, and a souped up version will have a cost associated. That I thought was a grand plan. I’d even like to see short samples of items if I could.  EG: The QR Scanner, could a free version only allow 1 scan with a message. That way you can write the app, but can’t compile it practically?  That way we could at least see what it can do, code around it and purchase it when ready.

I will be purchasing some, sure. I’m not saying charging is wrong. Maybe, if you aren’t going to support it any more make it free and unsupported perhaps?

My apologies if I insult anybody, that’s not the intention. Just thinking out loud. 

I think my final thought is that just because you CAN charge for a plugin, doesn’t mean you should… 

[Scott_Harrison]

1. If the plugins don’t do what they are supposed you should read the docs to help you understand what the plugins do. If there is a bug, let the creator know. I get lots of emails and bug reports on forum, I get them fixed with in like 2 days usually faster. Also read lerg support thread and he responds very fast.

2. You may want to contact the developer via forums or email. If no response after a couple weeks then I think it is ok to Contact corona support.

3. Please report in store plugins forum section.

I like the idea of users being able to use my plugin to test. Lerg put a lot of work into these plugins. I think it is unpractical to have a lite version of the qr scanner to have take care of. I think plugin developers with face competition down the road and prices will go down and quality will have to improve.

[Scott_Harrison]

I know the transition from free plugins to paid plugins is hard to chew but money helps support corona and plugin developers. Also plugins help corona put their resources to the engine.

[rob]

Hi Graham, I’m going to try and address your questions though I will be answering in generalities as I can’t speak for the developers submitting plugins.

1. Actually we do support refunds within limits. They are documented in sections 4.5 and 4.6 of the EULA you agree to by purchasing the item. The link is currently visible on the page that comes up when you click in the Buy button.  We are going to add a FAQ and more links to get to things and provide more visibility to those kinds of questions.

2 & 3 have basically the same answer. It’s up to the developers to keep their documentation and plugins up-to-date. I’m sure if we get enough reports about an old plugin not working any more and the developer isn’t responding, we would remove it from the store until it gets updated. But given the number of updates, some plugins will fall into disrepair at different rates than others and we hope the developers keep them up to date. 

Plugins require maintenance, some more than others. If the plugin maker feels they need to stay on top of a plugin that subject to frequent updates, having continual funding makes it worthwhile to maintain the plugin. If you don’t need it going forward, you can cancel the subscription but most people using these plugins will want to maintain their apps and it makes the subscription worth it.

Rob