Marketplace Closure

[Joel R]

33 minutes ago, Dreadknux said:

finding an app on a marketplace that many customers will be able to purchase

My goal is to provide a listing directory to make it easy for developers to list their apps.

A directory will provide visibility, scale, and ease for everyone to visit.  

Developers will handle payments and support on their own.  

Edited August 15, 2023 by Joel R

[Dreadknux]

1 minute ago, Joel R said:

My goal is to provide a listing directory to make it easy for developers to list their apps.

A directory will provide visibility, scale, and ease for everyone to visit.  

Looking forward to it. Are you working with any other IPS third party devs on this project? I figure it would be better for multiple high-profile devs to club together and create something like this instead of having a number of competing listing sites work against each other. 🙂

[sudo]

I would have hoped for a 6 month notice period to be honest not 2 1/2 months.

Considering we cant download addons any more other than through admincp we cant even back up for a wayward plugin dev who is sick or unable to handle the change in 2 months.

Please at least let us download what we own to self install for now.

[Square Wheels]

5 minutes ago, sudo said:

Please at least let us download what we own to self install for now.

This would be helpful.

[Stuart Silvester]

10 minutes ago, sudo said:

I would have hoped for a 6 month notice period to be honest not 2 1/2 months.

Considering we cant download addons any more other than through admincp we cant even back up for a wayward plugin dev who is sick or unable to handle the change in 2 months.

Please at least let us download what we own to self install for now.

 

5 minutes ago, Square Wheels said:

This would be helpful.

Nothing in that regard has changed yet, the only material change is that you can no longer renew any purchases. Anything you've purchased and is still active is still available.

[sudo]

Just now, Stuart Silvester said:

Anything you've purchased and is still active is still available.

Until the end of October?

I mean we are all paid customers.

[Stuart Silvester]

1 minute ago, sudo said:

Until the end of October?

I mean we are all paid customers.

After October you'll need to get any updates from the author, we're not going to be allowing files to be downloaded directly, that isn't part of the agreement we have with authors. There will be a means to 'prove' your existing ownership to them on their own sites so you can continue to receive updates and renew the purchase (if required)

[sudo]

1 minute ago, Stuart Silvester said:

There will be a means to 'prove' your existing ownership to them on their own sites so you can continue to receive updates and renew the purchase

So basically if the author doesnt put another way for us to get it up we lose our purchases.

I mean the timeline and warning should have been a bit longer. Losing the ability (an ability we had in the past) to download a copy thus losing our purchases for good is a bit nuts.

I dont know why foot keeps meeting mouth with some of these changes.

[Charles]

1 minute ago, sudo said:

So basically if the author doesnt put another way for us to get it up we lose our purchases.

 

We cannot just give out the code as it's not our code to give out - it's the author's code - so you would need to transfer your proof of purchase to them. It takes 2 minutes not 6 months to transfer your purchase 🙂 

[CodePixel]

5 minutes ago, sudo said:

Losing the ability (an ability we had in the past) to download a copy thus losing our purchases for good is a bit nuts.

Why instead of talking about this here, won't you contact authors of apps/plugins you use to find a solution that fits both parties?

I understand that this isn't something you are happy about but until October there is more than enough time to transfer your purchases from MP to Author's website.

Edited August 15, 2023 by CodePixel

[sudo]

2 minutes ago, Charles said:

We cannot just give out the code as it's not our code to give out - it's the author's code - so you would need to transfer your proof of purchase to them. It takes 2 minutes not 6 months to transfer your purchase 🙂 

Yeah I know what you are saying. My biggest concern is wayward authors who cant deal with setting up their own system or cant meet the 2 month deadline. We (paid addon customers) lose and we lost before when we lost the ability to back up and download directly before.

The irony is pirates never need to worry about this stuff, just paid customers who lose.

I dont want to sound like I am just trying to beat you down, I am just very concerned and can see a lot of issues especially with the short timeline.

Will we still be able to get keys/method of transferring you speak of after October but not download in suite?

Edited August 15, 2023 by sudo

[Charles]

Just now, sudo said:

Yeah I know what you are saying. My biggest concern is wayward authors who cant deal with setting up their own system or cant meet the 2 month deadline. We (customers) lose and we lost before when we lost the ability to back up and download directly before.

I dont want to sound like I am just trying to beat you down, I am just very concerned and can see a lot of issues especially with the short timeline.

Will we still be able to get keys/method of transferring you speak of after October but not download in suite?

I understand your concern there and I hope that authors will take over their work so you can keep using it.

[Lindy]

1 minute ago, sudo said:

Will we still be able to get keys/method of transferring you speak of after October but not download in suite?

Yes, you'll be able to transfer after the closure as well. 

[Joel R]

47 minutes ago, Dreadknux said:

Looking forward to it. Are you working with any other IPS third party devs on this project? I figure it would be better for multiple high-profile devs to club together and create something like this instead of having a number of competing listing sites work against each other. 🙂

Yes, I will corral all of the Marketplace devs together so we come to consensus on this project. I've been fortunate to have worked with many of them over my 10 years with the community.  They all know me (for better or for worse, ha 😆). 

My goal for this new Marketplace Directory  is simple: provide an independent directory using Downloads.  It will link you to the providers' own website for support. 

 

More broadly, to anyone who is hesitant about these changes, there are some pros and cons: 

- More independence, more variation, and total flexibility for developers and themers.   They can build their own core, their own gallery, their own package of plugins.  You can't do any of that in the current Marketplace.  I expect to see some truly experimental and innovative approaches to how developers and themers work with IPS 5. 

- More independence, more variation, and total flexibility in how they charge.  Providers can charge crypto, they can offer a bundled set, they can offer discounts, they can set their own policies for chargebacks and refunds. 

- Trust will be deeper, not wider. The IPS Marketplace gave a broad stamp of trust to all providers for meeting standard IPS coding. But for clients, this is an opportunity to deepen ties to one or two trusted developers and take our most important apps private and control our own development pipeline.  I do believe the biggest developers will still offer - and can make healthy income - off a broad portfolio of single purpose mods, but those by itself aren't going to dramatically fulfill your community's specific needs.  

[CodePixel]

3 minutes ago, Joel R said:

My goal for this new Marketplace Directory  is simple: provide an independent directory using Downloads.  It will link you to the providers' own website for support. 

I admire you in doing so, I'm not saying that this can cause you some problems but I'm also not saying that this will be just a directory, imagine if some developer "scams" client, he will then come to you to find a solution, if you are willing to be a mediator in such scenarios, that's admirable, but I personally wouldn't have time or will to engage with people because of someone else's error.

Edited August 15, 2023 by CodePixel

[D-Trox]

Does this mean that this feature will be completely withdrawn for owners?

If I like the market place on my site, will I still be able to use it? 

And will the "Providers Directory" feature be available to us (cloud and not cloud host)?

Thank you

[Charles]

2 minutes ago, D-Trox said:

Does this mean that this feature will be completely withdrawn for owners?

If I like the market place on my site, will I still be able to use it? 

And will the "Providers Directory" feature be available to us (cloud and not cloud host)?

Thank you

You might want to re-read the post 🙂 

Your existing Marketplace items will be transferrable to the authors of those items so you can keep using them. The changes have nothing to do with cloud vs self-hosted.

[Robert Angle]

So I just looked at the Provider Directory and visited their links. Some of them only do custom work. Some of them have some work to do on their sites. But your regular marketplace contributors like @opentype @Adriano Faria @Miss_B all have very well developed Marketplaces of their own on their respective sites. 

I could care less if I am getting a 3rd party app/plugin or theme from outside the marketplace, but it was nice to have a one stop shop to search for what's available.

6 hours ago, Joel R said:

My goal is to provide a listing directory to make it easy for developers to list their apps.

A directory will provide visibility, scale, and ease for everyone to visit.  

I was thinking of the exact same thing but you beat me to it. 😉

 

[Hisashi]

That's the biggest rewind I've seen from IPS in years of service. 🤯

The marketplace is an excellent showcase for small and big developers to publish their work that would have a potential chance of being bought, you've killed every chance for these products to be discovered.

There are many small modifications that enrich the IPS, and now they will no longer have visibility.

People will now have to apply for paid service one by one, for features that were already available in marketplace.

Edited August 16, 2023 by Hisashi

[Lindy]

3 hours ago, Hisashi said:

That's the biggest rewind I've seen from IPS in years of service. 🤯

The marketplace is an excellent showcase for small and big developers to publish their work that would have a potential chance of being bought, you've killed every chance for these products to be discovered.

There are many small modifications that enrich the IPS, and now they will no longer have visibility.

People will now have to apply for paid service one by one, for features that were already available in marketplace.

I understand where you're coming from; it was indeed a tough decision. There is also, however, the side of the Marketplace that we've kept largely to ourselves and that is the costs associated with operating it. Many assume this has been an additional revenue stream for IPS, but the reality is, it has never even broken even. To explain why and in the spirit of transparency, let's use the example of a basic $5 plugin purchase; with our 10% commission, minus transaction fees, etc. we net virtually nothing, but we assume all the risk. This means, if someone decides they're unhappy with a resource (even though we have an all sales final policy), or uses a fraudulent payment method and a chargeback is performed resulting in us losing that dispute, we pay a $15-20 fee--the author is not charged this fee and usually retains the proceeds from the original sale. It takes dozens and dozens of sales of that single resource to break even on that one transaction. Multiply that by countless chargebacks and incidents of fraud in addition to the immense development time required to review resources, the administrative time to handle customer vs developer disputes, support overhead, payout fees, etc. the Marketplace actually costs us a significant amount to provide and maintain.

The costs have actually exponentially increased as the use of the Marketplace has decreased. Previously, there were more good sales to help lessen the blow of the bad sales, however, with a 75% decline in usage over recent years, the volume is simply no longer there, so the losses are subsequently no longer sustainable, even if we were to triple our commission rates, which would only hurt us and the resource authors. On a scale of full app stores such as Apple, Google, Steam, etc. you have enough volume to chase the bad with good and the numbers add up. We are, of course, not Apple. 

As has been said, the vast majority of our customers today appear to either prefer their installation to be "stock" or to have custom development performed by third party providers. The top three Marketplace resources are currently installed on only 2% of communities (that report statistics to us, to be clear). I know how easy we've made it for those who like lots of tweaks and resources and we hope you will continue to enjoy these resources, but unfortunately, we can no longer prop up and absorb the losses of a declining ecosystem. I fully meant what I said in the original announcement - we are excited to be able to redirecting the resources expended in supporting the Marketplace towards improving the platform on the whole and creating new opportunities for motivated third party developers to connect with interested customers for custom development, integrations, services and yes, premade resources. 

For those that are active in third party resource utilization, I'm very encouraged by and grateful to @Joel R for his interest and commitment to bringing our loyal third party contributor community together again in a way that provides them more freedom and opportunities.

[Robert Angle]

2 minutes ago, Lindy said:

For those that are active in third party resource utilization, I'm very encouraged by and grateful to @Joel R for his interest and commitment to bringing our loyal third party contributor community together again in a way that provides them more freedom and opportunities.

I would like to ask why the structure of the Invision Marketplace couldn't still exist here, but instead of financial transactions and downloads being handled by Invision, just remove the commerce aspect of it and just let it be a "Downloads" directory with hyperlinks back to the author's site. The author could still update the application or theme's description, changelog, and compatible versions here at Invision, and the client would still be able to shop around here where they feel comfortable, and if they find something in your [former] Marketplace, they click through to the authors personal site.

Downloads allows for URL submissions as it is. Why not retain that directory of applications here? What Joel is proposing to do, you could set up in a short amount of time and then it would be almost on autopilot. An existing Invision directory would only increase exposure to the applications that 3rd party devs have created and sell.

[CodePixel]

11 minutes ago, Robert Angle said:

I would like to ask why the structure of the Invision Marketplace couldn't still exist here, but instead of financial transactions and downloads being handled by Invision, just remove the commerce aspect of it and just let it be a "Downloads" directory with hyperlinks back to the author's site.

This has been said already and answer will be still the same, if IPS decides to provide even a downloads with links forwarding to authors website, they put themselves in place where they still have to be some sort of middle man and people will hold them accountable if something goes wrong, or demanding removal of such file from downloads.

It's simply not worth it for them as a business and I fully understand that you should too.

[MediaDiGi]

I just checked the marketplace stats, and with 59 mods purchased to date, I think I can have a word about this decision:

For me, the marketplace was a great way to:

1. See what new addons have been released and decide if I should install them on the community I manage.
2. Keep up with the updates and install when one is available.

These things will no longer be possible without the marketplace, and I will have to check ten different dev sites, install updates manually, etc.  A major drawback for me.

I don't have access to financials, but from your latest actions, I see that you want to focus on the enterprise customers that take a cloud-managed plan because that's where the money is. And also, enterprise customers only install a few add-ons. 

 

[Daniel F]

15 minutes ago, MediaDiGi said:

Keep up with the updates and install when one is available.

3rd party devs are still able to provide such update checks and notifications.

TBH, they are now even able to implement much better approaches which would have probably been forbidden in our marketplace because of our guidelines.
License checks, direct download from github for people with a license, etc..

[MediaDiGi]

6 minutes ago, Daniel F said:

3rd party devs are still able to provide such update checks and notifications.

TBH, they are now even able to implement much better approaches which would have probably been forbidden in our marketplace because of our guidelines.

Indeed, they can, but this doesn't mean they will do. Sure, some will especially the top 10 devs who make some money selling add-ons while others who do it mostly for helping the community will not bother with that. And I know it from the days before the marketplace was live.

 

Edited August 16, 2023 by MediaDiGi