An Update From Buildbox Ceo, Jonathan Zweig

Dear Buildbox Community,

I absolutely LOVE the passion you have shown since we announced our new plans! Buildboxers have the most vocal energy in the video game creation market today, and that’s why I am so in love with our community: we hear you, and we believe in you! I have been spending my day on the DMs and on video calls with many of you to hear you out and understand your needs moving forward.

Our mission is to provide you with the easiest software in the world to make video games without writing code. We provide #nocode as a service. Providing that value to users sets us apart from all other platforms but requires a different way of funding future product development.

The number one piece of feedback we got today is: with these new revenue tiers, you, the community, want to know our big plans for the product and the future.

More about this below, but as a first big step in that direction, we are moving up the biggest product announcement we have ever made. In the next 24 hours, we will be releasing more information about Buildbox World!

Also, a reminder about Buildbox Classic: for the first time, Boxers can now use a new and improved version of our original award-winning 2D software that has been used to make countless top 100 hits on the Apple App Store and Google Play, for FREE.

Buildbox 3, which has been used to make some of the most popular 3D games on the market, is now also FREE to export to all the major app stores!

With regard to pricing tiers, we know we are making some big changes, and we want to address some of the biggest questions we have received from the community about them:

First to address the elephant in the room: Rev Share

• None of these Rev Share changes are effective immediately, as they are all “Coming Soon” (later in Q2)
• All games exported before July 1st, 2021, are not affected in any way by the new revenue share tiers.
  • For the sake of clarity, the revenue share % for all games exported before July 1st, 2021, is locked in at 100% to the creator for those games (even if they are updated after July 1st, 2021.) The new revenue share tiers only kick in for new games created on or after July 1st, 2021.
• Any existing published games will NOT be affected (Only new games as of July 1st, 2021, will be subject to the new rules). Just be sure not to update your existing bundle ID
• The Rev Share Threshold listed is designed to protect your revenue up to that point, so we don’t take our cut until your game earns that much per month (enforced on a per-game basis)
• Why are we taking Rev Share at all?
  • As a business, we need to make sure we are making enough money to stay in business for you. Plain and simple. We are 100% invested in YOU, our community, which means our products’ revenue is put directly back into our products.

That leads us to our next point: What do we plan on reinvesting the revenue in?

• Asset Store:
  • Working to rapidly expand the Template and Asset Store. Coming soon, there will be a TON more assets available to everyone to use and purchase.
  • Eventually, we want to be able to support your creator submissions so you can earn revenue selling your assets, nodes, and creations directly inside Buildbox!
• Buildbox Ad Monetization Solution:
  • Coming soon, as you can see on the website, we will be releasing our new Ad Monetization Solution. This is going to be significantly easier to use than anything we’ve offered before.
  • We also will be continuously optimizing this solution so that we can help you maximize your revenue by working with ad network partners to adjust configurations and adopt new technologies on your behalf.
• BUILDBOX WORLD:
  • We’ve kept this under wraps for some time, but it is about time we share. As we mentioned, keep an eye out in the next 24 hours for a sneak peek.
• More to Come!
  • We are working on a way to be more transparent about our Roadmap and what we are working on. You deserve to know where we are headed and we are so excited to be on this journey with you, our unbelievable community!
• Ongoing product stability and feature improvements to remain the easiest game development tool in the world. We can always be better!

Talk soon,
Jonathan Zweig
CEO
Buildbox

 

Perhaps there would be less blowback to the "we're gonna take more of your money" news if implementing ads and IAPs worked flawlessly 100% of the time across all platforms

 

As of this very moment you have a product, BB3, that is unstable for the developer and even more unstable with the product it creates, both In Android and in IOS. It has not improved, which can be witnessed by crash logs. We keep being told it is being worked on. Really nice words, but not reality and the community has made it very well known. Nothing has changed, just words.

New meaningful features has been nonexistent and basic features are slow to come and still buggy. But we keep being told great things are coming, just over the horizon. More words.

You mention Ad Monetization, something that is already implemented but obviously needs to be easier for most developers using BB3. Let’s see how these words pan out.

Frankly Asset Store means nothing and isn’t an important feature in my opinion. Just one more cookie being thrown to developers rather than spend the same time creating needed features…..shader control, multiplayer, stability, optimization, etc.

Buildbox World, this already worries me just hearing the name and I wonder how useful it really will be to developers. Gimmicks.

Words. That’s one thing a veteran Buildbox user has heard a lot of. We’ve been promised a lot of things, but have seen very little. Veterans have always known that things are done a bit half ass at Buildbox, but it has gotten immensely worse since Trey Smith walked away.

Now we see that a lot of time has been put into developing Templates to sell, fixing menus in BB3. Still have nodes full of bugs, crashes in the engine and crashes in the products the engine creates both in Android and in IOS, optimization is terrible, each update breaks things that wasn’t broken before. But apparently the BB team and leadership believes Templates, menu changes and Buildbox World is more important than actually fixing the product. Unbelievable!

And now you want our revenue. Unbelievable how this makes sense to anyone with a business sense. Other engines will steal your customer base, something that has been dropping already. You need to get you product fixed, working properly, features already implemented fixed and add features that causes this product to lag behind other engines currently. Then ask us to share our revenue. Your product is not close to being considered ready for revenue sharing.

 

I would like to hear more about how this affects Master Collection purchasers. As time goes on, nothing seems to improve and that purchase feels more and more like it was used to fund development with zero strings attached as to whether something tangible had to be delivered. On top of it, when you say 'all games', it sounds like those of us that have sunk thousands of dollars into Buildbox are going to be affected by a revshare as well. Please clarify that.

Honestly, I love the idea of a 'no code' solution and I keep checking in periodically to see if Buildbox has matured, but I keep coming away feeling like nothing has changed and, as Codifie indicated, there is little more than more promises and more gimmicks with little substance.

 

These frequent und unpredictable pricing policy changes is ultimately what drove me away from BB. I too keep coming back hoping for more reasonable pricing for BB. I fully understand that development has to be financed, but I have to agree with Codifie that the priority should be stablizing the product. For me this announcement in a nut shell is that you will introduce more ways to secure more income for the company but I read nothing exciting for your users.

 

Whenever a CEO or PR uses the term "passion" they mean "backlash".
This is all very shady and I wont be using Buildbox. If you were just more honest and upfront about all this I'd think otherwise, but the fact that your CEO is on twitter saying things like "Buildbox isn't a game engine" is really putting me off (it calls itself a game engine several times on the website).
Please rethink how you do business.

 

I don't know about y'all but BB has changed for the better DRASTICALLY over updates. I get the occasional crash but never to a point it upsets me.
I happen to be one of the users that BB works as it should. I don't see a bunch of broken things. From BB 3 first release to now, they have ADDED soooooo many new features for us. I see people say "nothing new ever" type of stuff but I bet I can make a list of NEW things that hit BB and that list would be over 100 strong.

The whole ad rev share thing would scare anyone. Changes to money, no matter what, perks up your ears. But even if they gave the software for free and charged nothing and got no rev share, people would STILL say negative things. "Completely free? You must not plan on making new updates then! You must not have faith in your product!" Lol. Trust me...it would happen.

I wish I could talk about what I seen when they had that one company reach out to some of us to give feedback. The ui plans they had alone where amazing. After sleeping on this last night I've come to a new view of the revenue share thing. Share rev...get FREE software. In a nutshell, you don't HAVE to pay monthly money that your worked hard for up front. You get nearly full access NOW...pay later and only if you start to make real money off your games.

I pitched the argument that they should follow the trend of other engines like Unity and Unreal. But if you think about it, that would NOT keep them afloat. I think they will get there eventually but as they said, they only have 1 mill users. That's a big number but not when it comes to taking this software to the next level. Not compared to Unity or Unreal. That's chump change.

In the end, I am on the fence. Like some of you, money talk makes me nervous lol. But hey, if all of what some of you say comes to happen, they wont have a choice but to try something else. If this news makes evveerryyoonneee jump ship...then you should be happy as they would revert back or come with a new plan. But I don't see that happening.

Do you know how HARD it was for me to pay for BB a few months ago? My sub ended and I struggled to save up money. I even sold some of my kids stuff. Because I believe I can do this thing. (They didn't mind and wanted me to) you can ask any boxer I speak to...miles of messages to them of me worried. Shoot, I've even had some boxers give me their sub over the years. It's a struggle. But now, if I wish, when my sub ends...i have nothing to worry about. No more selling stuff just to pay for it. I'll have the option to pay for it via sales. That's been the worst for me...the idea that I've used BB for some 5 or so years and have made little money...yet had to keep tossing money just to use the software. Those days are gone. Yay!

If you're a pro user and say you make 3,000 a month...you give 10 percent...300 bucks. Sure, 5 to 600 for the year and you keep all revenue is better......FOR YOU. I remember pitching the idea to everyone that all of us LEAVE the "made with BB" logo in all our games...to get more people here using BB. Which in turn makes them more money and in turn gives US better software. But nooooo. No one wanted to. And now you complain about this? If BB is going to continue to get better, they need to make money. Imagine if they raised on kickstarter 20 million bucks...oh you can bet your backside BB will become even more epic. This is the same. Our little 300 to 600 a year is only so much toward development. You cant forget they have hundreds of thousands of dollars they have to pay employees per year Leaving lesser toward new developent.

I'll end with this. BB...it is we who are betting on YOU. You think this plan will work? Prove it. If all fails then revert back or whatever. But I feel it wont fail. The things I've seen behind the scenes... our money is definitly being used right. Show me. Show us. Hype us up and then deliver the next big thing. That's what all of you should be saying.

 

very well placed (Nasty App) I also think that the Buildbox team is on the right track ((congratulations to you for seeing this other side of the coin and the entire Buildbox team))

 

Lol. Bottom line is BB is something new. A new angle no other engine tries to do in this way. They are also small compared to the likes of Unity etc. So the same strategy those engines use wont work YET for BB. But this new free version will change that. In time we will see millions more users allowing BB team to adjust the rules a bit. Inching closer and closer to that happy spot we all want.

 

I just realized I completely misread. The 70 percent rev share to BB and you get 30. Ouch. All I can say. I'm a long time supporter of BB but I cant really speak positive of that. Should be 70 us 30 bb. All of this is making it so hard to be positive and support BB. I for sure arent going anywhere but if that's the rules...then us pro users should not have to pay anything in rev share. No one can make any money this way. If I made 1 million bucks...I only actually make 300,000? Ouch

 

yeah. I was replying to your earlier message. Then I seen your update where you realized that this is a money grab, pure and simple.
I have been a long time user and defender of BB but not when it comes to this ridiculous decision that has the Internet already laughing about BB’s business practices.

I also want to mention that you talked about 100 features. Are these features or are these the core? Because without a core there is no engine and most feel like they are core to me. Don’t get me wrong, there are features, but few and far between.

Crashing is persistent for users playing our games and one single crash means you can not be a feature on IOS. Unless you are making very simple games, you are experiencing crashing on the users end which analytics clearly shows. We have been patient and supportive, until you try some sketchy bullshit like this revenue grab.

Plain and simple. BB is full of bugs and needs to be solid with some features before you try to do some sketchy crap to your userbase

 

I appreciate everyone's feedback and comments on this.

I just want to circle back on the BB3 is not exactly what I would classify as new, and depending on when you got into the product, there were pricing options to 'pay outright' for the complete Master Collection which has not really matured over the last couple of years. I picked up Master Collection 2.0 for just over $3,000 Canadian and I don't think I can honestly say I have realized the value. I kept waiting for features to be developed (and to be fair, there have been some cool nodes added), but nowhere in the vicinity of what I would have expected. I honestly thought that the product was further along than it actually was and then it ended up being more promised and different pricing plans.

I've worked in software development and been in a start-up; I get it that there are costs associated in getting a product off the ground. It's not cheap but to learn (again) of another pricing change, and one that greatly impacts my ability to ever earn back what I have paid wanes. It's not even just the cost of of the product, it's whether or not I feel confident that BB3 will ever be in a true production state, and I really hope it does because I love the concept of rapid prototyping and getting a product done. Despite that I could build it in another product (Unity or GMS2 for 2D), I believe in 'work smarter, not harder' and would rather get a product done then be able to brag about the thousands of lines of code I have written. Getting it out the door is what makes you money.

Anyways, I hope that we see something that will turn this ship around sooner than later and there is more transparency around what is happening with the other products outside of BB3.

Thanks everyone for the time, listening, and passion for the product.

 

It all makes sense now. I was looking at the previous CEO's profile and was shocked that Mike Seavers who has a degree in business would make such a stupid announcement.
It looks like Mike left the company back in April and they have a guy with only a computer science background running the show. People like that are great at destroying businesses. If I worked at Buildbox, I would start looking for a new job, its a sinking ship unless they get some competent leadership.

 

How does this affect the "lifetime" customers?

 

It impacts everyone from July if you update or release a game from then.

 

I was shocked to hear the news about the changes that were to take place in Buildbox. For me the basic idea may be a good feeling to do better but frankly you have put us all in a very awkward position.

Firstly, revenue sharing should only be limited to the free version of Buildbox 3 or Classic with a reasonable ratio of 60% for the developer and 40% for Buildbox or a 50% parity for the developer and 50% for Buildbox, as far as subscriptions should be concerned there should not be any revenue sharing with Buildbox the whole thing should go to the developer.

Buildbox still has bugs to fix, features to add and improve, and a balance to find, the community has high expectations for this product.

We Boxers are waiting for real improvements and concrete announcements that will take Buildbox to another level, there is still some way to go so don't ruin everything.

 

Fatal business mistake... this is probably the beginning of the end for Buildbox...

 

It applies to Master Collection purchases as a PRO user. You get 90%, with ad threshold 2500 USD

 

Just say Directly I will money from you no matter what... You need to take this subscription plan back otherwise like me and many loyal customers will go away from your buildbox and stop this scam of saying passion and all .... you want money that's it. The new CEO and the new Payment plan is full of hypocrisy.

 

Well there is a way around it. But you can't monetize your app, you have to sell it straight out the box. Not a good option, but you control what data that can and can't be seen