Show HN: Construct 3 – Make games in the browser
Been a longtime follower and user of Construct (all the way back from early Construct 1 days) and the work that&#x27;s been done in both Construct 2 and Construct 3 has been extremely impressive - I was initially skeptical about C2&#x27;s move to HTML5, but over time it made a very convincing case for the fact that web can indeed be performant. I think moving the whole IDE to web was the logical way forward for Construct itself, and I&#x27;m glad to see it&#x27;s working out with C3.<p>However, as things are right now, it seems that the time has come for me to part with Construct. I do web development for a living, and game development is something I do for fun on the side mostly for my own enjoyment these days. The limitations of the C2 Free Edition were too much for me (as a programmer even my tinkering tends to be event-heavy, and even my smallest toy projects tend to start with creation of more layers than what&#x27;s available in the free version), but this wasn&#x27;t really an issue since the Personal License was simply a one-time investment, and I&#x27;ve been very happy with my purchase.<p>However, with the move to a subscription-based payment model, this changes completely. I can&#x27;t justify paying $99 a year for how much I use the program. The Free Edition is also not an option because it seems to be even more restrictive than the C2 one. This is extremely unfortunate from a personal standpoint, and I&#x27;m clearly not alone with this opinion, seeing how much negative feedback the move to subscription model has garnered on the Construct forums.<p>But there is also the business standpoint to consider. The one-time payment was a huge pro for C2 and more than made up for the restrictions of the free edition in my books. But now with the move to a subscription model you&#x27;re competing more directly with the likes of Unity that also uses a subscription model. And if you look at what Unity offers in the free tier[1] and compare it to Construct[2], the latter looks like a complete joke in comparison. With Unity, you get a full-featured engine with all the export options that you can make money with (with a revenue cap after which you need to upgrade, similar to C2 Personal -&gt; Business), with the most notable &quot;downside&quot; basically being a &quot;Made with Unity&quot; splash screen. Something like this is what I would expect to see with the C3 Free Edition as well in order for it to be truly competitive. After all, game IDEs don&#x27;t exist in a vacuum.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;store.unity.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;store.unity.com&#x2F;</a><p>[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.scirra.com&#x2F;store&#x2F;construct-2" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.scirra.com&#x2F;store&#x2F;construct-2</a>