Back in September I had to decide whether to dive in and pay for the expansions, I was wary of exactly this kind of thing. It was something like $90 to get them all, which is not exactly cheap. But once I had them I had them, great. A good investment. And Making Fun, despite the way the majority of this community loves to crap on them every chance they get, it works. They address bugs fairly quickly. So at this point, there's a working product that I've already paid for, so I'm not going to be thrilled by any decision that changes this. Still, I came to expect this back when the decision was announced.
I'm not exactly thrilled about the new pricing model, but I get it. It's hard to expect people to work for free. If I'm understanding my choices correctly I can either
A) Get the first year of Dominion Online for free (a $36 value) and never play offline again. No campaigns or AI games.
B) Transfer my expansions to Dominion Offline (I don't know, a $55ish value), and start paying the online fee immediately.
I guess I'm stuck with Option B; I do enjoy the campaigns and do play offline sometimes.
Here's my real fear with this whole process:
I paid $90. I got 16 months of online and offline Dominion. (Actually, by the time I've purchased Adventures, and I still plan to, it will more like $100ish dollars). Once 2017 rolls around, I will keep my offline expansions and then will have to pay $36 through the year. But what happens if after a year or two, it's decided that this implementation isn't right either, and it gets switched *again* to another developer. And the new guys say "hey, here's our new pricing model, y'all got to pay for all the expansions *again*. And the cycle continues. From what I've seen Making Fun has done an excellent job of honouring player's past purchases; this may not be a financially viable position for the new developers to take, but there it is.
I really hope that the decision-makers have made the right decision this time and we don't have to make another switch. I understand that they feel their previous choice (MF) was the wrong one, and they may be right, but ultimately that decision is going to cost me a bit of money. I am optimistic the new developers know what they're doing and can deliver a good product. The previous product worked just fine, so the onus will be on them to deliver a better one.