Here is what I know:
- I paid good money and it was promised then that early adopters were just that and would receive future updates in exchange for paying for a non finished product.
- Support has ceased as far as I can tell and we will not be getting free updates when the current version does not work anymore, for instance because the UE SDK changes.
- I made a specific request for a statement about future updates. Now there are only two possible answer to that request: Yes or No. I don’t see any of those answer in the email I received back. Instead it was a general and foggy remark about “future license model”. That is a canned answer if I ever saw one. If you do not answer the question, you either did not read the email or you do not want to answer and have something to hide.
- I most certainly will not apologize for pointing out here that I feel cheated because I paid money under the pretense that I will receive future updates and now I am cut off.
So for me, I am hoping that Epic will release a LOD reducer plugin that replaces InstaLod. I have already written off my money mentally and if Epic releases something else I can use, I will certain use that instead of paying again for something for which I already paid.
And another thing: I paid like, what was it70, 80$? That’s a lot of money. I don’t grow my money on trees and I did it because I understood the conditions such that we would get future updates. To say now that “Oh it was ONLY for this or that part of the technology and we gave you other stuff because we were in a charitable mood” is like a slap in the face.
I don’t want to harm anybody and I certainly understand the plights of a small company, but that’s no way to treat your customers.
Here is what they should have done in my eyes:
- Made it clear from the beginning that the “early adopters” paid for access to an unfinished program and are expected to be testers and report bugs.
- Also made it clear that we will have to pay for the finished product, perhaps a lower price to get more people to sign up early. InstaLod does a good job at what it does and I am certainly willing to pay a fair compensation for it. But fair also means to treat your customers fairly.
- When I wrote my email give me concrete answer to the extend maybe that “You misunderstood our terms but early adopters will get a good deal” or something like that. I would not have been half as mad had they shown the least bit of concern for my questions. Instead I received a non informative general statement and stood there like an idiot. Especially after they must have known that people were already mad on the old thread that they deleted a few days after my email.
Instead I get a forum post like from a Soviet Government that states that the government has lost it’s trust in the people and the people must re-earn it. I mean have you people learned nothing from the latest Facebook PR disaster? You could have thrown us a bone, do some sweet talk, offer us a deal, but instead you express your consternation about the fact that I go public with a canned email that does not even contain anything private and how “disappointed” you are in us. Yea, great job. I’m not a businessman but I am pretty sure that sort of treatment of your customers is not Don Draper approved.
And for the UE 4.18 version that was supposedly released: I don’t know where that was released but the last one that I could find on Gumroad was InstaLODUE4_SDK2_U3 and that was in September or so and not a few weeks ago and it contains warnings for UE 4.18. If there was a new one for “early adopters” I didn’t get the memo and it’s not at the usual place on Gumroad.
Anyway, I feel cheated and just used for the money. And to say it was not even a significant amount of money for the people at InstaLod, just something they cashed in on the side isn’t helping that feeling either. The title of the old thread was “Would you pay for something like this?” which indicates to me that they weren’t even sure if their stuff would find enough customers at all. So I guess our support must have been of some value to their decision to further pursue that venture, so our payments can’t have have been that insignificant.
It doesn’t matter anymore to me, I’m off the train. You all have fun paying twice for the same product