I’ve to renews the qr code plugin. If i pay it now it will still work in May?
I’m not going to pay for a plugin that will work for 2 months.
What will happen to all plugins in our apps that are in store, they will be working?
I’m really confused about the plugins, after Corona going “dead” in May.
I tried to find the email I received from Corona but I can’t find it.
Anyone can help in this regard?
We’re (QWeb) building a new marketplace. Details here: https://forums.coronalabs.com/topic/77174-replacement-marketplace/#entry407445
We’ll be supporting paid plugins in much the same way as the current marketplace but with a lower fee per sale. When vendors release updates, those using the plugin will receive email notifications so that they know to download the updated files and copy into their project
Scott is also working on a marketplace too, though I don’t know the details myself. I’ll leave him to his own sales pitch there! Competition is healthy and uploading your plugins to all available marketplaces just puts you in front of more people, so I’d encourage following both developments.
Vlad has mentioned having his own plans for plugin distribution too, though again I don’t know the details.
Not sure if 3 stores helps or simply dilutes. Makes sense to have a single repository to me.
Well, part of the reason I posted early on in the announcement thread and then as a new thread in the marketplace discussions was to see if anybody else would respond with conflicting plans before we made a decision on this, so on the one hand I’m in complete agreement there.
But on the other hand, I’ve also always believed that competition feeds innovation. Photoshop is a good example - it’s been the market leader probably since the 90s now. Other software exists with very similar features but Adobe dominate to the point where editing images is now called Photoshopping whether their software is used or not, and there’s just no competing with that. The result? Software that gets slower and buggier with each release and doesn’t particularly improve in features much any more. They don’t innovate because they no longer have to - they’re not fighting off the competition any more, their software will be used regardless. Cars though - Mercedes, BMW, Jaguar, Tesla - they’re all competing against each other for the top spot and as such they’re innovating at a phenomenal rate. I drive a Mercedes, it’s 4 years old now and it had some incredible features when I bought it - I went overboard with the additions really - but walk into a Mercedes showroom now and their base models put mine to shame. Even the A class comes with MBUX which just wasn’t a thing 4 years ago. Why? Because Tesla gave us fully autonomous, all electric cars and everybody had to innovate more than that to stay in business. Competition is important for this.
Ok we’re talking about a couple of competing websites here, not manufacturers within billion dollar industries, but the same principles apply and I’m more than happy for our store to be a “one of many” service. At least until we come out on top, ha.
“one plugin store to rule them all”…
Unity has a single store (and if you can’t get an asset there then you probably don’t need it)
I gave up owning a car and just let the gf drive me around… its the way forward!
I’ve to renews the qr code plugin. If i pay it now it will still work in May?
I’m not going to pay for a plugin that will work for 2 months.
What will happen to all plugins in our apps that are in store, they will be working?
I’m really confused about the plugins, after Corona going “dead” in May.
I tried to find the email I received from Corona but I can’t find it.
Anyone can help in this regard?
If you buy a plugin today and build an app with it, it will work until Google or Apple make a change that breaks it. The fate of Corona Labs will have no effect on it.
Come May 1, we fully intend to have a system in place that will allow paid plugins to continue to work. We just don’t know what that looks like yet.
Rob
My other half has her own car, but she rarely uses it… I drive her up and down the country on a daily basis.
Seems I’ve drawn the short straw here 
This. :lol:
thanks all for the answers. but none kinda resolved the problem.
As far as I know, plugins are downloaded and checked when building an app. if corona passes to 100% offline builds, will break the validation, and worst will break the plugin it self, since I didn’t download any plugin myself, corona did it for me. it will stop to do this.
So regarding of any plugin payed every year. this way of doing things will stop to work for a 100% corona app. It’s just impossible to have this accomplished and have plugins that needs to be renewed.
Another marketplace with plugins won’t resolve the problem, because, even if we can download the zip file and we can put it on a folder in our build to work. but if we need to renew the plugin, there always to be a connection from the plugin to the server of the marketplace to check if it’s a valid plugin. so building an app can’t be 100% offline. and the corona program needs to be prepared for this new marketplace also.
and in a less than 2 month you still don’t know how to resolve this worry me.
Self-hosted plugins are currently possible, so presumably a 3rd-party store would essentially be self-hosted plugins, just hosted by someone else.
My problem is not if I buy a plugin now and build an app now. My problem is if I buy a plugin NOW and try to build an app in 2 months.
You are telling me that you will figure out a solution, just lets hope and trust it will be done.
Regards,
Carlos.
For that to work, Corona simulator needs to embrace and incorporate the new store. All plugin makers needs to agree and migrate to that platform and agree with those fees. If that store fails, all our plugins will stop to work. and making updates to current apps or building new apps will fail.
And new stores with better plugins or better prices or better servers, can’t evolve and exist because they are not recognized by corona simulator. I think the problem it’s not that simple as you think. It maybe the easiest approach.
Maybe the marketplace should just be a store front?
Devs would pay the plugin developer directly to download a plugin and optionally, if they want updates then maybe a small subscription?
This seems the simplest solution and needs no continual sim support/updating.
Much like I paid for texture packer and got support for 1 year. If I need updates I can choose to pay for a subscription.
Again, not that simple.
Texture packer is 1 program from 1 company and you buy directly from the company. That’s not a marketplace. That’s a front end store that you can buy a product and have support from them. Using same model than texture packer, If there are 1000 different plugins from different companies, there needs to be 1000 websites from each developers so they can support and sell their plugin. There needs to be invoices, taxes, etc, involved. most developers will just give up on continue their plugins, it’s not worth the trouble.
A marketplace is a place where all developers can deploy their products there and the costs of running things are not concerned of them, and in return they give a fee to the marketplace each sell they make.
@SGS, also If someone pays a file and can download it and use with any kind of protection and use it freely, it will be in the same day in another website for free, just for that website earn some bucks on publicity. that kills completely the store.
Having a subscription, won’t resolve the problem. And to make protections for plugins, is just not the way to go, because each developer needs to implement their solution, that’s reinventing the wheel 1000x times, and most of the time easy to evade them. The protections needs to be in the store (marketplace) not in the product in this case.
This isn’t particularly a new issue. Once an app is compiled, that’s the end of the authentication check. You could at the moment subscribe to a pay-monthly plugin, compile your app, and then immediately end your subscription. Your app would still work as an app indefinitely despite not paying for the plugin any more. If you later want release an update you’d have to subscribe to the plugin again and compile, at which point Corona would drag in the latest plugin version.
With offline builds it would still be possible to subscribe to a plugin, download the files, and then unsubscribe. Granted with the new approach you’d then be able to build as many times as you like but still, you’d have to resubscribe to download the latest version of that plugin.
Personally as a plugin vendor myself, I think a plugin should only really warrant a monthly charge if the buyer gets something every month for that charge. Plugins updated often warrant this, and plugins that provide a service which consumes remote resources such as chat room functionality warrant this. Again updates wouldn’t be available without the maintained subscription so that example is covered already, and for service based plugins my advice would be to build activation keys in to that service and charge a monthly fee for those keys rather than for the plugin itself. This just seems like a better modal to me.
For plugins that really are just a one off download that adds functionality that’ll continue to work indefinitely without any communication with remote servers, I honestly don’t see that a monthly price is fair. Value that plugin appropriately for the amount of work that went into it, divide that value by the number of developers you’d expect to grab it, and that’s your fair one-off price.
It’s not your decision what a developer should ask for their hard work or not. If you don’t like the developer model you don’t need to buy it. You buy only if you want.
One time off plugins are almost impossible, this days…with google and apple changing the game every year. I like 1 time payments as a client. but as a business model have a limit reach. and with a small group of people interesting in you product that model is dead in the first place. It’s only viable if the platform is growing not shrinking (corona case)
6. Marketplace sales will cease. Vendors will be paid what they are owed, and will have to distribute updates for their plugins themselves. Users will be able to download purchased plugins and assets before the store closure. Corona Labs will stop accepting new submissions to the Marketplace on February, 15. 2020. Self-hosted plugins will be turned on for everyone so community plugin developers can continue to provide plugins.
You’re right. Two months isn’t a long time, but it’s our intent that you will:
a. Not have to authenticate against Corona Labs servers.
b. be able to download copies to use offline.
c. get access to self-hosted plugins which will let you link plugins directly from plugin developers
d. let you get new versions of first-party (i.e. Corona made) plugins
What isn’t clear is how you will work with third-party plugin developers. One-time purchases seems to be pretty straight forward. Buy it, download it, drop it in the plugins folder. There is already at least two marketplaces spinning up. I don’t know if Scott Harrison is only going to sell his plugins through his marketplace. Lerg is planning on selling his directly. @richard11 is spinning up a site that is intended to be for any plugin developer if I understand.
Setting up a pretty simple validation API wouldn’t be hard or take very long. But yea, we have our work cut out for us.
Rob
Thanks Rob, for still having time to response.
The plugin that worries me is QR Scanner from Spiralcodestudio.
I don’t know if they are still in business. the website is gone:
I need this plugin to an app that I made for free that took about 3-6 months to complete, but still evolving. It’s used in a non profit company by ±300 volunteers that distributes food for the poor. all routes, food weight, distribution, container track, etc are all made in the app. qr scanner is used to check in and check out in the building. easier for older people to use and didn’t wanted to go with GPS position because it gave me lot’s of trouble in corona and some devices are tablets with no GPS chip.
I’m paying the plugin from my pocket, so you understand my concern. paying now for a plugin that I’m unable to use anymore in 2 months is my problem. l would like to know if i need to abandon the plugin and think of something else. I will try to contact spiral to check their position.
Thanks again,
Carlos.
We purchased the splash screen control plugin in Dec 2019 for $99 and it should be good for a year. But when doing builds today (Feb 20, 2020) I see the Corona splash screen. Do I already need to do something differently to NOT see the Corona splash screen?