We recently introduced VIP Servers into our game, but we want to get rid of them for several reasons. The reasons aren’t relevant so I’ll just get straight into the problem.
We’ve already had 43 people buy VIP Servers. These VIP Servers basically allow you to complete the game by buying them (they give unlimited money and access to every item), and they’re also quite expensive. Just clicking the ‘Allow VIP Servers’ box in Configure Place completely gets rid of them.
I want the people who purchased them to continue being able to use them until the end of their subscription period, but also not allow new people to buy them. How could I do this? One solution would be to increase the price to an absolutely ludicrous amount but I fear that would give the wrong impression to people who don’t know why the price is that high. Any other thoughts?
I think your ‘ludicrous amount’ idea is the best plan.
Keeps them active, but you won’t get anyone buying them again. If anyone wonders you can just put an explanation in the game description.
I know that I could just put an explanation in the description but a lot of people don’t read that. I guess this is what I’ll do and I’ll also make a feature request if there isn’t one already.
Well, just notify your user-base. Give the reasons you are able to specify the reason for change and warn those who have it to not buy it again because you plan to take them away on xx-xx.
In the meantime, increase the price so that people don’t continue purchasing it. You may also implement a small warning UI in game for this change by checking if the server is a VIP server.
At the moment, you cannot selectively restrict creation of VIP servers. It’s binary: they are either enabled, or disabled. Changing the price or turning off VIP servers will cancel all active subscriptions. Those who paid for servers cannot continue using them; and leaving them on means you can gain new subscriptions.
It’s points like this where I find VIP servers fall off. Maybe a feature request would be a good idea here, a configuration on when active servers should be cancelled and turning off VIP servers just disables new subscriptions as well as the “subscriptions active” pane.
You may want to do this work manually. I have a suggestion, but it might not be what you like or completely go against your game’s principles. I’ll leave it here, do with it as you will.
Usually for migration procedures that involve money like this, you’ll want to give users a certain timeframe (who’ve paid for servers) to join the game to get recognised as a VIP server owner. When the time frame expires, disable VIP servers. You can then set up an independent system temporarily that allows joining private servers and then once that alotted period is over, remove the system out altogether.
I’ll probably just make it a really high price and include disclaimers in the description and in-game, especially in VIP Servers. I’ll also make a feature request for this and other VIP Server features
I like this too, but unfortunately, we’re not given a nice clean list of who purchased VIP servers on our game, so tracking this is difficult. We can’t see all purchased servers, nor the owners of active ones either. Just the number of servers active.
I don’t really want to give refunds. That’s why I said I want the already-active VIP Servers to stay active for the rest of their subscription month, but bar anyone else from buying VIP Servers and also obviously cancel the re-subscription next month. We need a way to gradually phase out VIP Servers in this way