Can't Stop will be Premium starting March 1st 2021 (FAQ)

[MoiMagnus]

What is the Can't Stop players group? I played Can't Stop almost daily up until it switched to premium, and never got any sort of announcement. I just suddenly couldn't play anymore and was confused about why. (As a side note, finding anything about "Can't Stop" in the forum is difficult, as the search engine cannot parse the apostrophe in "Can't" so you cannot actually search for the game name effectively. I found this thread by dumb luck.)

On BGA homepage (https://boardgamearena.com), you should see:

On top, some big images about some new games.
Just below, what is live streaming on BGA (if any).
Just below, all your personal information feed, containing:
+ Any message from the player group of one of the games you played to.
(Which is quite rare unless you are playing to a game which is actively updated and maintained)
+ A message for every friend that add someone else in their friend list
+ A message for every friend that win the first time at a new game
+ A message for every friend that becomes Premium member.

Currently, I have in my feed from 7 days ago:

Can't Stop players:
Dear Can't Stop players,
Can't Stop will be Premium on BGA starting March 1st.
Why? Why now?
We created this quick FAQ to explain everything: /forum/viewtopic.php?f=35&t=19854

[And then 60 answers from various players]

[unlessyoucanbebatman]

This Can't Stop news will affect all new users and all non-premium users in a very real and visible way. Why is it only mentioned in the forum?

this will be the news, but probably at 3/1.

Nope, this was never publicized, at least as far as I can tell. I never knew until I got on with a friend and intending to play, only to find that we couldn't because of the paywall. It's been extremely frustrating to watch so many games go premium so suddenly, and I've found myself feeling backed into a corner by the looming lack of game options. I just really hope these changes are better publicized (and announced earlier) in the future...

[darbielee]

On BGA homepage (https://boardgamearena.com), you should see:

On top, some big images about some new games.
Just below, what is live streaming on BGA (if any).
Just below, all your personal information feed, containing:
+ Any message from the player group of one of the games you played to.
(Which is quite rare unless you are playing to a game which is actively updated and maintained)
+ A message for every friend that add someone else in their friend list
+ A message for every friend that win the first time at a new game
+ A message for every friend that becomes Premium member.

Currently, I have in my feed from 7 days ago:

Can't Stop players:
Dear Can't Stop players,
Can't Stop will be Premium on BGA starting March 1st.
Why? Why now?
We created this quick FAQ to explain everything: /forum/viewtopic.php?f=35&t=19854

[And then 60 answers from various players]

Thank you for this detail - I do see that now when I look there on the homepage. Looks like it was only posted three days before the switch, which I still question whether that's enough notice even if I had seen it ahead of time. It certainly wouldn't have helped this sad situation, anyway:

the children have spent months preparing to teach the isolated elderly people by creating help documents and presentations to explain how to use this website and specifically how to play Can't Stop with it. This project was due to begin next week with the children showing each elderly person how to create their account on here via video call and then in the following weeks teach them how to play the game and play with them.

But overall, this just further complicates where I should be looking when I want to find news relevant to me. Now I need to check News, Forums, AND the homepage regularly, with no rhyme or reason to which types of news are posted where? Feels like blindly throwing darts and hoping I hit something useful once in a while. This is asking too much of users' time and attention and does not provide an efficient way of gathering useful, timely information.

At this point the issue is not about Can't Stop going premium - it's about the poor communication. I totally understand that admins are trying their best with the tools they have. But the tools are failing.

[Cullich]

Currently, I have in my feed from 7 days ago:

Can't Stop players:
Dear Can't Stop players,
Can't Stop will be Premium on BGA starting March 1st.
Why? Why now?
We created this quick FAQ to explain everything: /forum/viewtopic.php?f=35&t=19854

[And then 60 answers from various players]

Yup, I see that, after I went to look for it and scrolled down til I found it. It got buried by messages about who of my friends were adding whom to their friends list and who just won what for the first time, things I could absolutely not care less about. Having to scroll so much to find things is like telling me that I have to search 10 pages of a newspaper in order to find where the headline is. Intermixing that kind of thing is really messed up. (I have seen messages about Dice Force and Potion Explosion, cause other messages didn't come in after them.)

otoh, maybe this is exactly the point you were trying to make, idk.

[KlaatuBaradaNicough]

No. Thanks to Can't Stop publishers, we managed to find a solution to keep the existing graphics (especially the different 3 boards available), so we can keep the game as it is (and as you like it).

So, still no option for an unintrusive background then?

[Sebastian Herb]

The tutorial game should change to something like 99 (addition game), Chess, or Tock because these are classic games that can not be copyrighted.

[KrilMun]

Since we touched the Premium subject, I do have a question. Why isn't the premium pricing distributed fairly across different regions, just as we have it on platforms such as Steam, Netflix, Prime Video, etc?

To be more specific, I understand a $15 monthly plan is about 2 hours of work, considering a minimum of $7.25 per hour federal wage in the USA. This, considering 8h of daily work, is roughly 1.29% of the average USA monthly salary.

Taking it to my region, Brazil, for instance, $15 is currently about R$80.00. Given a minimum federal wage of R$6,875 in Brazil, this is about 11.5 hours of work, which is almost 6 times the price average USA residents pay. This, monthly, converts to something around 7.27% of the average Brazil salary.

It gets even worse when we look at the annual $96 plan. To average USA people, it's only 8.27% of the monthly salary. To the average Brazilian, though, converted to R$515.00, it's about 46.8% of our monthly salary (!!!!!!!).

It's an absurd amount of money we don't have to spend on leisure and have to spend on the water, energy and gas bills, education, rent, and all that stuff instead. It's already REALLY hard for the average Brazilian to be able to simply live in this country with a small salary like this, and it gets worse when they can't have leisure at a fair price because of exchange rates.

I don't have data of how many Premium payers live on this and that country, and I'm not talking only about Brazil, but I can be at least 90% sure that a lot more people could pay for it if the prices were adjusted this way. In Steam, for instance, sometimes I see games priced at a 2:1 rate only, instead of our current 5.37:1 rate (bare in mind that in Steam, specifically, it's each game's publisher that decides it, unlike the other platforms mentioned). It's an awesome customer care experience, and I feel more than happy to pay for games, help the DEVs, and have the extra benefits if I feel like I'm paying a fair price.

Unfortunately, the pricing in BGA currently doesn't give me that feeling, and I don't feel comfortable enough to use the money I don't have to become Premium, even though I would love to.

It's not a BGA-specific issue, though, it's global. Mostly for digital products and platforms, prices should be better adjusted to not severely impact other countries' economies.

[Benoit314]

Are you sure about your prices?
My prices appear in my local currency and it is way more cheaper if I convert to US$.

[nick-odaemus]

So does this warning still need to be on the front page? This makes it look like the game will be "going premium" in 3 months, when it's already been premium for nearly 3 years