>No option to read on desktop
>No option to export as .cbz for easier offline reading and portability
>No option to buy issues; any "downloaded" issues are inaccessible when subscription ends
>No extended functionality (e.g. being able to click on "see this issue for context" text boxes and have the mentioned issue(s) bookmarked)
>Not even available worldwide
Try and explain how this is better than Win-O' and YACReader
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>No option to export as .cbz for easier offline reading and portability
Come on, that's like complaining that Netflix doesn't let you download MP4s. You know exactly why they can't do that
People are clearly already ripping their comics at higher quality than they're providing though, and those people would only be hurt by publishers stepping up their game.
If I'm paying for something but can't even access it forever and whenever I want then what's even the point?
Its worth remembering that the video game industry already went through this entire song and dance routine, and the conclusion that allowed Steam to become the biggest video game sales platform in the world was "Piracy exists, but it doesn't *matter*. Not really. If you make your products convenient and easy to acquire and the user experience good, most people will pay rather than pirate. And the ones that pirate often end up becoming some kind of customer anyway down the line, because if they like your product even if they pirated it originally they are primed to pay for something related to your brand down the line. The pirated product has essentially become advertising. And the people who pirate even when your product is available, easy, and cheap? They were never going to pay you under any circumstances anyway, so thats not a lost sale. Zero dollars were missed there. So punishing everyone else trying to stop that one small group of people from enjoying your product without paying you only *hurts you* by making the entire rest of the world less likely to use your service."
I don't see why the same logic should not apply to digital comics. Yes, some people will abuse a download function. But is it enough to MATTER? And anyone who is downloading that many of your comics is, guess what, a comics fan. Even if they are not paying you for the comics themselves, they can't download the tshirts and shit they are going to buy. You've still got them on the hook for everything else.
vidya industry doesn't have lcs owners crying like a b***h though
you won't see a gamestop manager or used game store owner seething over steam/b.net/etc
Literally this. They wonder why people don't buy comics but the only easy way that isn't "$3.99 for a single issue or $20-40 for a single TPB" is a shitty subscription service that has no permanence.
Even with steam you have to have the service to buy and play the games, but it doesn't fricking matter because you've actually BOUGHT it and can use it wherever you want, versus Marvel/DC which locks you into only using it if you're on mobile, have internet access, and have a subscription.
Sad that comics have gone down the same shitty path as music and TV, and not the objectively better gaming model.
>Even with steam you have to have the service to buy and play the games, but it doesn't fricking matter because you've actually BOUGHT it and can use it wherever you want
Don't forget the other quality of life features that steam offers that we have had so long we have taken them for granted. For anyone who has bought a game and then lost or scratched the disk, Steam letting you re-install games from your account onto any new computer you buy years later is a godsend. Automatically updating your games is just handy, and the ability to keep a friends list and use steam to not just open the game but automatically join your friend's session in a ton of games is just damn useful. These are features you wouldn't have if you just bought the disk at gamestop.
I'm not sure what the equivalent other functionality would be for comics, but I'm sure that there are quality of life features that can be folded into the digital service that make it a genuinely attractive option to the sort of people who just are not going to buy floppies no matter how many variant covers you want.
Hell, that right there is probably the easiest one: animated variant covers. Something that can only exist in a digital environment.
I think something like
>(e.g. being able to click on "see this issue for context" text boxes and have the mentioned issue(s) bookmarked)
along with built-in reading lists for each character and series would be the simplest "oh hey that's cool" feature they could add for me to consider using it, but I guess the closest equivalent would be a joint effort between Marvel, DC, Image, etc to make an official MyAnimeList for comics where you could either use their current individual subscription models, or just buy whichever comics you want and rate them as you would on MAL.
Variant covers would be cool yeah, but honestly the more interesting one in my eyes would be the possibility of audio and animation inside the digital comics themselves. Places like Webtoons already allow music and gifs in their official comics and Marvel and DC know how popular they are so I don't think it's an absurd thing to expect, but it's probably too much of a gimmick for old suits to consider it.
>don't see why the same logic should not apply to digital comics.
Ah, you are making a rookie mistake. You are thinking that the "product" of comic publishers is the story printed, not the book itself. You are paying a premium because you are consuming a premium item with a "collective" value. And if you sell the digital version of the story at a lower price, you are devaluing the main product. That is why manga can have a digital service like Manga+ but Marvel/DC would never.
Problem with that approach: it isn't working anymore, hasn't for years, and the comics industry is famously dying. I don't disagree thats how they think its supposed to work, but the reality is that it is adapt or die time.
They have time to adapt since many years ago. ComiXology at some point adopt the pay for read model (access to all their digital library for a monthly payment) instead of a pay for own model, and at some point DC seemed to copy that model with the DC universe thing and Marvel with their own service, but instead they dropped the ball and never commit to leave the LCS.
People have been downloading Marvel Unlimited since the service started. People have been releasing those pirated copies to others for over a decade.
Same with DC Universe.
MOST consumers do recognize that they want to support content creators plus they also want to safely be on line, so many will pay REASONABLE prices to stream or subscribe for a service versus thinking of it as a
>suitable replacement for actually buying things
I personally don't want the physical media but I don't object to have virtual on an external back up download to watch something.
However, when we are all dead and gone in say 20 to 50 years, all those kabillions of TBs of download files and even those millions of TBs of things like important documents, income tax reports, birth certificates and most notably photographs that were either backed up to the cloud or to externals - either the externals will have suffered permanent failure damage or our deaths means no one is paying for that cloud storage (or the cloud storage service no longer exists) or any other likely shit, meaning that stuff will no longer exist.
In the meantime, museums and others will still have a 500 year old paper bible some monk hand drew before they got consumed by the Black Plague. .
You wrote all of this and said virtually nothing at all. It’s astonishing really.
>(1) why are you b***hing about paying for a subscription service when most of you virgins are stealing this shit
>(2) all your stolen shit and everything else on the cloud or external won't exist in 30-50 years for technical reasons, just like anything SOLEY saved on 8 track tape or nitrate has largely degraded
Less wordy enough for your pea brain?
>>(1) why are you b***hing about paying for a subscription service when most of you virgins are stealing this shit
because they're not providing anything worthwhile, so i will continue to not pay for what they won't easily give me.
and yes, they are obviously presenting it as an alternative to actually buying the comics because it's the only way they provide to keep up with their new comics if you want to do so digitally.
>>(2) all your stolen shit and everything else on the cloud or external won't exist in 30-50 years for technical reasons, just like anything SOLEY[sic] saved on 8 track tape or nitrate has largely degraded
...which is why having it available for offline downloading will make it last far longer, won't it? and for as long as they won't allow that basic feature, piracy is doing a better job at media preservation than any comic company.
yah I just got my tachiyomi set up
i'm a limewire kazaa baby that shits in my blood
ain't it mihon now? tachiyomi got murked by kakao in january
been an az user since it got forked
after they get legal trouble with manwha tachiyomi become unusable, kotatsu better IMO
tachiyomiAZ hasn't steered me wrong yet
it's just preference at this point
huh, and the github's still up too. pretty surprised this wasn't sniped alongside tachiyomi
I'm also almost done with JoJolion
i kept falling off
but last night i made a concerted effort to finish it this time
Why would you think a digital subscription service allows you to keep files after you end the subscription? You’re just paying an access to a library
That's the point. Subscription services are shit and aren't a suitable replacement for actually buying things.
based
i pay for internet
i'm not gonna pay to enjoy things on the internet
Holy FRICK is that wrong. Why would anyone use such a service?
"supporting the creators" according to some people... even though we have no way of knowing if the proceeds for broad catalog subscription services actually helps the individual issues.
what's wrong, you don't want to accept a worse experience just to "support creators" just because the publishers don't care enough to do the bare minimum and be better than literal hobbyists?
Notch has sold thousands of copies of Minecraft all on his self-hosted website. So what's stopping everyone from self-hosting it themselves? One of the most played games in the world is on Itch.io
I don't think using a breakout hit that became the most popular game to ever exist and made its creator an instant billionaire is a good benchmark for what works. Notch won the lottery, that doesn't mean that buying tickets is a foolproof way to become rich.
This also happens with the Topolino app and is fricking annoying with the app also being buggy as hell. And of course you only get access to the numbers your subscription provides. You can download your comics offline but it's a convoluted process of sharing every single page as a pdf and the combining them all.
>it's a convoluted process of sharing every single page as a pdf and the combining them all
what's the logic behind that? you may as well take screenshots of each page at that point
yeah but it's not the best quality if you screenshot since it's on phone
>>No option to export as .cbz for easier offline reading and portability
Why would they do this?
>for easier offline reading and portability
It ain't.