Disclaimer: I am not a marketing expert at all and I have no insight in how the Gdevelop team is getting paid etc. My understanding is that they have plans for several monetizing options while keeping the use of the software free.
As you wrote your opinion and your suggestions, I thought I just comment on them, as some of them - at least for me - are not really understandable or problematic.
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subscription: As far as I understand, one of the ideas for Gdevelop is to get a wider user base. A subscription model, no matter if it keeps the actual access to the software open, will automatically push people away. In the forum there are from time to time posts of users who complain about the export subscription and some of them won’t understand the concept even after getting detailed explanations that the one-click service costs money and no one can expect the software developers to pay that out of their own pockets.
If you mean to put learning materials such as game examples and starters behind a paywall, it will probably result in less users. -
That’s more or less what this post announced: Ads on Liluo.io, no?
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Not sure what you mean by paid games. Devs who use Gdevelop try to sell their games all the time, some of them quite successful. But how would that benefit the developers of the game engine? By taking a cut from the revenue like in case of other game engines?
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Both things are possible already and it is like in no. 3: where is the financial benefit for the engine developers?
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If this support would be based on a subscription, the same problem as no. 1 would occur.
Do you have any info about that? I have none and from my completely uninformed perspective I would assume that any profit generated at liluo can and will be used to maintain and improve the engine.
I think donations fit your description quite well.