Bought Spine recently for Ludum Dare, no regrets, great software.

FatalExit · 3 أكتوبر 2023

I first trialed it years ago but was unable to tell if it would be useful to me from the trial, and the price for the version I would use was quite steep for someone in my specific financial situation (serious gamedev with 6+ years experience but financially a hobbyist with low income and a hard limit on what I can earn (disability related)).

However after getting a significant hardware purchase refund, it was the day that Ludum Dare 54 was starting and I thought: "Lets go buy Spine no way this can go wrong..." I ended up getting the pro version.

And I was right, my experience with the software was amazing, I got going with the software within an hour of downloading it. It was simple to bring character designs I made in Affinity Designer into Spine with their JSON export, and it was simple to get animated characters out of it and into two game engines of my choice: starting off I used GameMaker, then 6 hours in switched the project over to Construct. Both engines had way simpler runtime implementations than anything else I have used for 2D skeletal animation.

In short I just wanted to say that I have already recommended Spine to multiple gamedev friends who are interested in 2D animation, and I will be continuing to work with the software myself, I am excited to dive into testing the 4.2 beta when it launches. I was a previous user of Creature2D, which now seems to have ceased development, and you seem to be resurrecting one of my favorite features of that software, and I am so excited to have gotten my Spine license at such a good time.

All I wished for previously was a little more granular pricing for folks who would be unsure the software is right for them, but after having used the software after buying it, price honestly seems more than fair and I would prefer Spine having a sustainable business model than being struggling to survive as a business.

Thank you for making such an awesome, accessible and easy to use piece of software, as a disabled person it's been one of the easiest to handle software packages I have ever used in creative media. I wish all the team the best, and for a bright future for Spine.

Nate · 3 أكتوبر 2023

Thank you for sharing your experience! We've poured more than 10 years of our lives into Spine and I'm very glad that you like the software.

Pricing is always a sensitive topic. It'd be great if it could be free. We make a lot of free software, but for Spine we wouldn't be able to put as much effort into it for such a long time, our team would be much smaller, and Spine wouldn't be where it is today. Then there is how much to charge. Subscription models are common now, but they are a scam. It'd feel cheaper initially and we'd make more money that way, but it's horrible. I personally refuse to pay for any software subscription, so I don't want to inflict that on others. Related is how to manage upgrades. We would make more money if we made sure every user was squeezed for each upgrade, but we don't want users stuck on old versions as it reduces testing and bug reports for the latest versions. We also don't want to spend effort on a complex upgrade scheme. It's just all around better to give all future updates and have all users on the latest. All that is how we ended up with our current pricing: somewhat high, but a one-time cost. That lacks recurring income, so we have Robin Hood style licensing where large companies pay annually to fund new versions.

The accessibility of Spine is a bit low for certain disabilities, such as color blindness or those with reduced use of the mouse. This is partly because the Spine UI is custom and the features needed are difficult (full focus traversal). We'd like to improve that in the future.

Please feel welcome to share your work here! We love to see what people are doing with Spine.

SSilverStraw · 3 أكتوبر 2023

I feel the pricing is cheap considering all the included future updates and product support on forums.

FatalExit · 3 أكتوبر 2023

SilverStraw Yes, don't get me wrong. I completely believe this to be the case now after trying the software and realizing the value that it has. I honestly think it's at a great price now, but I could never really make up my mind whether that was the case when trialing it, hence why it was only now I ended up picking up the license, and that was really a toss of a coin as to whether it would really click for me at all, which it did.

I prefer to pay for software to support devs, and now I am happy to have had the circumstances come up that I was able to pay the upfront cost of diving into the pro license. Reality is it's pro grade software and it's so well supported with runtimes across game engines compared to any other software I have used. I also love Nate's comment about the enterprise customers fronting a lot of the costs, whereas the reality is pro is pretty cheap when you compare it to other animation software.

I have an FL studio license (top version) that I ended up upgrading to over several years, and I think if I had realized that Spine had a similar licensing structure (re updates) to that earlier, it would have been much more of a no brainer purchase years ago. I don't know if I am dumb but I never really looked into it deep enough until I was buying.