*signs*
This is a totally kickass idea!

*Places his signature on the petition.*

*Marks his name out.*

Nevermind. It sounded a good idea until we got to the Matrix stuff. :p

-Ryan

*signs his and other random people's names to make list look bigger*

Hehehehe

Hey! I would have believed your post didn't contain an MS-paint sandwich as it's avatar!

I am not being serious...I though this was a "Play" post....V_V Im paying.

It is... heh.

Bolt Dragon wrote:

from another unnamed sorce: Do you realize that if everyone paid it'd be $20,250?

Your unnamed source is wrong here. They've just taken the amount of people playing at a particular moment and multiplied it by $15.
$20,000 sounds like a lot of money, and I wouldn't turn it down, but for a business $20,000 a year (even if it was all profit) is barely enough to keep the business alive.
A single professional programmer would cost a lot more than that (yearly) to employ.
The thing is they BYOND Staff have probably sunk a lot more into BYOND over the past few years. The hub, pager, etc cost a lot of money to run. It costs less now they don't do game file hosting, but it's still not cheap.

BYOND is run by adults living in the real world, not some kids who live at home and go to school a few hours a day (which I think was half the point of Leftly's post).
They can't just go "oh we need more money to make BYOND work, let's mow a couple of hundred lawns". They've got their real jobs/lives, and they've got to work on BYOND, so where would they fit in a third job?

Bolt Dragon wrote:

damn it to hell if i'm going to pay for something THAT SHOULD OF HAD PEOPLE PAYING FROM THE START!!! if u want us to pay then u should of started from the beginning. i dont' wanna cause a fuss bug u've brought this upon yourself. i didn't know about this whole.

Your logic seems to have missed a connection here. You're upset that something worth paying for is finally being paid for?

"Did we forget to mention? The BYOND software suite is absolutely, unconditionally free. Oh, there's a fortune to be made, but first ... the free-lance gaming revolution! Come join the fray as we sweep across the Internet and, of course, ... deep into the ever changing lands BYOND!" Dantom's OWN words!

And the software is still free. Certain aspects--quite a minority of them actually--of using the site and hub are not. The BYOND membership plan unveiled this month doesn't contradict in any way what you just quoted.

i got that from a sorce that will stay unknown. now saying that,i would expect u to keep it free. now i read what u put in the announcements but for petes sake, if u can't keep this up with the money u have,then get another job or have a garage sale, or do oddjobs for cash.

Likewise if the cost of membership bothers you but you still really want to be a member, then get a job, have a garage sale, or do odd jobs for cash. Those things will pay for a BYOND membership many times over; but they will not suffice for Tom to keep BYOND afloat by himself.

again,if u wanted us to pay for something u've been planning for a while then u should of started from when ya 1st made byond.

NetZero used to be free; people still use it. BYOND is more free than that; anybody can play and make games at no charge, and only a few things require membership.

from another unnamed sorce: Do you realize that if everyone paid it'd be $20,250?

Your source's numbers are way off. The BYOND community has considerably more users than that.

He could buy himself a car with that money. i know some of it may go towards paying off byond, but y start now.

Because it had to be done sometime. The site wasn't going to just keep existing forever and ever without some influx of cash to keep it going.

if i wanted to pay off byond i would opf started from the beginning. i think i've said enough :D

You could pitch in at any time; that's hardly the point. Point is you didn't, and nobody else did either. So Tom could let BYOND die, or he could transform it into a semi-viable business. You're not really upset that BYOND membership didn't exist from day 1, because you wouldn't have been a member even if it did. You're upset that this is a change, one which probably doesn't much affect you.

And to just crush all the other overwhelming flaws in this argument, here's the clincher: Dantom intended from the beginning to make BYOND profitable or at least self-sustainable, and to do so while keeping the software itself and game making/playing abilities free. Tom hasn't deviated from that plan one iota: he's only brought it a few steps closer to reality. From the outset it was planned that somewhere, for something, there would be charges, with the exception of the software. Upset that there were no charges in the beginning? That's because there wasn't much then to charge for. You're basically complaining that the candy store, once nearly empty, now has a bigger inventory; but it was always a store.

Lummox JR

This is the best post digitalmouse has ever made because it reminds me of my own =D

~Kujila