seriously? subscription and commercial rights?

[Kitsuru_infernus]

i would be fine if you just left FaceRig alone and continued to work on this, but your not only abandoning it, but removing it from steam also? sorta feels like a slap in the face to the community that supported your growth, but i get it your trying to kill off that community and force them to get the paid stuff or they'd never move from facerig.


paid subscriptions... i 100% fail to understand going this route other than greed and i myself would look to any other program or app before paying a sub for Animaze regardless of price.
(thank god ill still have the abandonware FaceRig)


streamers will have to pay for commercial rights to stream? seriously? i've been streaming for 2 years and made less than 50$ and you want me to pay for not only monthly subscriptions, but a commercial right? i honestly can't believe it. did somebody at your office wake up and turn into Mr crabs?

it's really a sad day for FaceRig regardless if we get to "continue to use the abandonware" or not.
i fully understand that anything i have to say probably means NOTHING to any of you because money, but I honestly think this is a mistake.

[Menagerie]

So I read that news article. I didn't see any mention of their pricing structure specifics other than 'subscription'.

I'm generally not a fan of subscriptions, and if they're charging a monthly fee for streaming with I can see an issue with that. However, I can't find anything about the specific subscription offers *at all* and that makes me a bit worried to be honest.

[Kitsuru_infernus]

https://www.animaze.us/news go to the bottom and its there.

[LogrusWeaver]

I'm curious as to exactly what features are going to require extra payments, and exactly how much those payments will cost per month. It feels like they don't want to post the features/prices for some reason. Oh, and did you know that you can't use FaceRig AND any other Steam game at the same time? Whether it's on the same computer or two separate ones sitting right next to each other, it's a no-go. Will "Animaze" suffer from the same problem? Regardless of how much the tracking engine has been improved (Will I have to buy special, expensive cameras like the Intel RealSense cameras to use the 'improved' engine?), if I can't use AniMaze to produce a digital avatar while livestreaming a Steam game, then this software will be just as useless to me as FaceRig turned out to be.
How about it? Will we be ever be able to use FaceRig/Animaze AND play a Steam game at the same time, or will a subscription be necessary to get such a basic feature?

[Menagerie]

Originally posted by Kitsuru:

https://www.animaze.us/news go to the bottom and its there.

This isn't actually informative:

Why is Animaze ‘Freemium’?

Making Animaze freemium allows us to provide a flexible experience that can work for everyone. The free version of Animaze allows anyone who’s interested to use awesome avatars without ever having to spend a dollar. For advanced users, our subscriptions provide great additional features that make Animaze even more powerful and fun.

As always, we’re committed to providing a great experience that’s affordable for everyone. That’s why our subscriptions will only cost a few dollars per month for most folks, or a little bit more for professional content creators. Subscriptions also allow us to invest development resources into a broader range of new features - even if they are tailored to a small group of folks. We didn’t have this luxury with Facerig, which left some of our community underserved.

Our #1 goal is to make Animaze the best it can be, and allow you to decide if it’s worth your time and/or money.

What features? What price? Are they going to do ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ licensing subscriptions (get nothing but the right to youtube) or are there going to be truly tangible benefits they couldn't have added without it?

Will those eventually move to the free branch or are they going to make 5 or 6 'extra' features and then try to milk that with subscription cash for a few years before releasing "Anixcite! A TOTAL rebuild of the Animaze engine!!"

[McShambles415]

Hi Folks,

My name is Mike and I'm on the Animaze team. I wanted to chime in and address some of the questions and comments brought up here. First of all, thank you for providing this feedback. We are trying to be really thoughtful about how we approach our business model, pricing, and ultimately value. I hear your concerns.

One of the reasons we have not announced specific pricing and free/subscription tier information is that we need feedback from the community via our beta. We know it's a significant change from FaceRig. We are confident that we'll be able to provide a much better product with much more frequent, meaningful updates and improvements that provide real value to the community by taking this approach. But it might need some tweaks.

To address a couple specific questions/comments:
- You will not have to buy a special camera to use Animaze. The improved tracking is built into all versions of Animaze.
- Paying for commercial rights isn't new to Animaze; it exists in FaceRig with the Pro DLC. The philosophy behind this is that if you are making money reliably from content that is powered by our software, you should pay a little bit more than folks who are only using it for fun or are just starting out and not making money yet. We think that's pretty fair.

Anyways, we'd love to get more of your thoughts so I hope you keep contributing here and/or sign up for our beta.

I hope that provides at least a little helpful context on where our heads are at.

[Menagerie]

Like honestly it helps. I've never had an urge to use FaceRig for profit. But I've used it for a couple of Twitch streams just because it was fun.

If I had to pay a licensing fee to have the option to do something I might do once every 6 months that would pretty much kill my interest.

[Kaitty]

If you're required to pay regularly just to use the software when an average streamer is making very little money, I can see it really backfiring.

As a creator, I already have had a commissioner telling me they likely don't want an Animaze model over a FaceRig model if they have to pay extra monthly/yearly just for the privilege of using the software to use their model, they're already going to pay a lot for a custom model.

I found this thread looking for a price since they quoted me a very high yearly cost, I'm really hoping it's just a rumor.

[Kitsuru_infernus]

Originally posted by Mike_Animaze:

Hi Folks,


- Paying for commercial rights isn't new to Animaze; it exists in FaceRig with the Pro DLC. The philosophy behind this is that if you are making money reliably from content that is powered by our software, you should pay a little bit more than folks who are only using it for fun or are just starting out and not making money yet. We think that's pretty fair.

By this same logic people starting out using your software and telling people about it while streaming etc you should be giving "starting out" people ad-revenue. you are making money reliably by content that is powered by people / streamers and you should pay a little for it.

[Sue]

Pretty sure they have a revenue threshold of what's considered as a commercial rights. With previous Facerig iirc you have to buy their Pro DLC if your stream makes $500 per month. If you are under that threshold (like you say, you only made less than $50) you don't have to pay anything.

This is their new threshold for Animaze. https://www.animaze.us/faq/animazedesktop/animazecommercialrights
If you are a Twitch Streamer the criteria of paying for subs is you are an Affiliate and having 800 subscribers (not followers). Whether how they will know how many subs you have since its not a public data is still under discussion and may changes during Beta period.

Again, you don't have to pay the subs if you don't meet that criteria. They are only asking for a fair compensation if you are making significant profits from using their content and/or tech.

[Kate Hanami]

don't try to fix what isn't broken
you say you build the whole thing from group up
that's like me saying I need to erase my whole harddrive because I bought a new GPU and don't want the old drivers to bug up
FaceRig ALREADY WORKS! why a new engine makes any better, Half-Life worked great in GoldSource, they remade the whole thing on Source Development Kit and it was a broken mess
and in regards to pay for subscription... if I wanted to pay monthly for something that SHOULD BE FREE in something I ALREADY PAID FOR, I would just have an Xbox gold and GET SOMETHING USEFUL from it, like a free game, not some stewpeed "extra features" that are not only locked behind a paywall, but are already bundled with the app but asking for your money to unlock it

[Kaitty]

Kate, you can use continue using FaceRig for as long as you want, and it's not getting any more fixes so you don't have to worry about that either.

--

As for the threshold for requiring VIP, it seems really weird. It should just income based, since 800 twitch subscribers is roughly $2000/mo.. but 140 patreons could be as low as $140 a month, and 10,000 subscribers on YouTube is almost nothing income-wise.

Hopefully VIP is cheap.

[Cr4zy3ye]

Originally posted by Mike_Animaze:

Hi Folks,

My name is Mike and I'm on the Animaze team. I wanted to chime in and address some of the questions and comments brought up here. First of all, thank you for providing this feedback. We are trying to be really thoughtful about how we approach our business model, pricing, and ultimately value. I hear your concerns.

One of the reasons we have not announced specific pricing and free/subscription tier information is that we need feedback from the community via our beta. We know it's a significant change from FaceRig. We are confident that we'll be able to provide a much better product with much more frequent, meaningful updates and improvements that provide real value to the community by taking this approach. But it might need some tweaks.

To address a couple specific questions/comments:
- You will not have to buy a special camera to use Animaze. The improved tracking is built into all versions of Animaze.
- Paying for commercial rights isn't new to Animaze; it exists in FaceRig with the Pro DLC. The philosophy behind this is that if you are making money reliably from content that is powered by our software, you should pay a little bit more than folks who are only using it for fun or are just starting out and not making money yet . We think that's pretty fair.

Anyways, we'd love to get more of your thoughts so I hope you keep contributing here and/or sign up for our beta.

I hope that provides at least a little helpful context on where our heads are at.

No dude, just no, If people have already paid for your product (or rather paid for a license key via steam), then they should have the right to use that product regardless of "if you are making money reliably from content that is powered by our software, you should pay a little bit more" ....................that's extortion.

It would be like someone from say Nissan approaching a rally car driver after he's just won and saying, "well your next car from us is gonna cost double mate"
Confounded the driver asks "why?",
"Well" says the man from Nissan "you had sponsorships on your car, clearly you made money, so............ pay us more"

If you do decide to launch with your current "business model" I think this will not only be DOA, but someone will end up taking your idea improving upon it, and releasing it in a consumer friendly way making the money that should have been yours, but I wish you all the best with it, (it is a cool idea).

[Adina_Animaze]

Hi guys,
Reading through your comments I realize that you are genuinely concerned and we should explain how and why we reached these decisions.
As most of you know, we expressed the need to create a successor to FaceRig for a while now. This need came as a result of our engine providers stopping support for our engine. We were lucky to have this engine when we released FaceRig and we appreciate all the help the team gave us along the years. However, when we realized that we can no longer offer new features to our users because of the engine's limitations, we decided it was time to build one ourselves from scratch. Having our own engine actually gives us the chance to be a bit bolder when it comes to certain experimental features that some of our users in the passed years.
Now, for FaceRig we used to receive many requests to offer a demo version for people to test.
That is one of the reasons why we decided to create a free to play product, which anyone can download and see how it works. For people who want to do more with Animaze, we considered the different pay gates. We went through many user testing sessions and discussions with our partners in order to get to the point where we agreed on a subscription type of monetization.
We want to be able to concentrate more on the requests of our users and this type of subscription model helps us do just that.
I hope most of you guys have signed up for our Beta test which starts tomorrow. It will help a lot to get your feedback after you see how Animaze works and the amazing technology it brings.

[Kate Hanami]

Originally posted by Aty:

Hi guys,
Reading through your comments I realize that you are genuinely concerned and we should explain how and why we reached these decisions.
As most of you know, we expressed the need to create a successor to FaceRig for a while now. This need came as a result of our engine providers stopping support for our engine. We were lucky to have this engine when we released FaceRig and we appreciate all the help the team gave us along the years. However, when we realized that we can no longer offer new features to our users because of the engine's limitations, we decided it was time to build one ourselves from scratch. Having our own engine actually gives us the chance to be a bit bolder when it comes to certain experimental features that some of our users in the passed years.
Now, for FaceRig we used to receive many requests to offer a demo version for people to test.
That is one of the reasons why we decided to create a free to play product, which anyone can download and see how it works. For people who want to do more with Animaze, we considered the different pay gates. We went through many user testing sessions and discussions with our partners in order to get to the point where we agreed on a subscription type of monetization.
We want to be able to concentrate more on the requests of our users and this type of subscription model helps us do just that.
I hope most of you guys have signed up for our Beta test which starts tomorrow. It will help a lot to get your feedback after you see how Animaze works and the amazing technology it brings.

that's what we call dancing around the issue
sure, it may be done out of scratch or into a brand new engine, but that doesn't change 2 core facts:
1: paywall, if you're going to make something free, you're more than welcome to put DLCs for it, but putting a subscription to have access to those features is step on the wrong direction, so if I stop paying I'll lose access to those features? is this netflix or xbox gamepass? NO, because on netflix I get thousands of movies and series, on xbox gamepass I get hundreds of games per month, animaze? I get "extra features"
2: commercial license, the whole point of facerig pro was "if you need to buy this license, you already have enough income to justify" and the deal with this one is "if you make enough money, you need to give us X% of it every month because YOUR income should sustain US" on facerig's license, it's like "I repair smartphones and fix PC for my neighbors for $20, but if I want to have a store and ask for the real $75 pricetag, I need to have a store license in the cityhall", and on animaze it's like "my son appeared in your youtube video and he told me you make X amount per video, so I want X% of every video you have because my son apeared in that one", so yeah, that's as karen as it gets https://youtu.be/AU_wADJy1Jw

[Kitsuru_infernus]

i also find interesting on how they plan to "Police" this? do we have to agree to what we are using the software for and report our income and what we are streaming on? lul and if we end up using it to stream with are we going to have the "animaze police" coming after us for that 20$ we made streaming last year? because we didn't get the "subscription and commercial rights" if that's the case i could see them being so evil and waiting for someone to just slightly go over their cap on a stream without the "subscription and commercial rights" and animaze sending lawyers after the streamer that just hit their goal. or you know... we could just not go this route, but they will because money is more important than people.