oepion
G.A.S. Guzzler
I do appreciate your taking on board the criticism and your willingness to change things. However I feel like the reasons you have given for the price fluctuations are not really relevant (in my case at least) so I wanted to further clarify my criticism with proper examples: I bought Studio Orchestral Percussion for $98 (down from $248) at the end of 2019, only to see it discounted to $48 a few weeks later, and where $98 was then the price of the bundle containing all three Studio Percussions libraries (I could have got the 2 other for free literally if I had bought it only a few weeks later). I also bought Century harp for $98 (down from $198) and less than a month later, it was given for free when you spent $98 on any library so I could have literally got two libraries for the price of the "sale", again.I appreciate all the comments and thinking in this thread, so if you will allow me to offer our point of view as developers. There is a couple of things going on, which affect our current pricing of instruments.
The most immediate one is COVID, which has caused a ripple effect through the entertainment business (ex. Many major shows and movie productions are on hold or being recorded slower, which means less opportunities for composers, which means harder to justify purchasing libraries).
The other reality is that prices have been aggressively coming down over the last couple of years. There are several companies responsible for this, including the largest entities in our industry.
All this was pre-Covid and I believe has nothing to do with prices coming down due to other companies since the MRSP of these have gone back to their original figures. I also bought the Steel Drum when it was on sale for $78 (down from $198), and it now sold for $48. It is a fairly recent library, much more than many other libraries that haven't seen their MSRP slashed 5 times.
This was made worse by the fact that having had time to play with such libraries, I've also felt they are nowhere near worth their full price, and the sale price I got them for was a better MRSP given their quality. The newer prices / better sales I missed would be closer to what their sale price should actually be.
As a consequence of these events, I've naturally become very wary of any 8DIO "sale" and even if I am a V8P member, I have now become much less likely to buy additional 8DIO libraries. Most other developers on the market have very consistent sales where you know you're not ever going to get a better price - I've since felt like my money was better spent on a 40% Spitfire sale or a 60% CineSamples sale than taking a leap of faith with randomly fluctuating 8DIO sales.
With that said, if you do change your sales model for a better and fairer one in the future as you have indicated, I might return to 8DIO.
I do appreciate your taking the time to respond to the criticism and I hope this message further clarifies where my frustration with 8DIO sales comes from. I am looking forward to seeing the changes you are planning on implementing later this year.