As Saurik continues to work on Cydia, tweak developers are using their newfound payment alternative, Patreon, to sell packages. Here are a few reasons why users are not liking this new model.
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How Patreon works
Patreon is an online subscription site focusing on small-time artists, developers, and YouTube content creators.
It allows these people to run subscriptions for their content such as videos, software, etc just like popular magazines and websites.
So long as you keep paying the developers the requisite subscription fee, you can legitimately download and use all their tweaks.
Here’s how LaughingQuoll’s page looks like.
Once you stop paying the subscription fee, you can no longer access future releases and updates.
Sounds like a decent payment alternative until Cydia payment, right? However, this doesn’t seem to be the case for the end users.
Why don’t jailbreakers like Patreon?
1. High costs
This is undoubtedly the biggest factor in determining the unpopularity of Patreon.
Purchasing a single jailbreak tweak through Patreon can cost you upwards of $10. This is a ridiculously high price as compared to what you would have spent if the tweak was available on Cydia.
Moreover, you won’t be able to access future versions should you choose to stop the payment at any given time.
2. Beta testing broken tweaks
As of now, developers are only pushing out tweaks in beta stage. This holds true for iOS 11-11.1.2 and Electra jailbreak toolkit as well.
A lot of developers on Patreon have only released paid beta versions. It’s a given all tweaks contains bugs during beta and alpha development stage.
Charging a few dollars monthly just to test a broken beta package is just not done!
Several testers and user are already voicing their concerns about the quality of support they are getting from the developers.
3. Small user base
A large percentage of the jailbreak user base comprises kids with no access to money or a Paypal account. Consequently, they start pirating any and all tweaks they can get their hands on.
The number of users who purchase genuine copies of a tweak is already very low. Combine that with the unpopularity of Patreon, the user base dwindles further.
My take
Using Patreon as a tweak marketplace until Saurik updates Cydia is totally fine with me. However, problems are bound to arise if tweak developers decide to stick to this platform for long.
With that said, some of them have clarified that this is just a temporary payment system.
Once Cydia gets a proper update for iOS 11, they will switch over to its default payment system.
Jeffrey Chan, a new developer on the scene, will soon begin a one-time payment system for buyers.
It would be great if other developers could take pointers from this and act promptly before things get out of hand.
What do you think about this new payment system – is it good or should users abandon it completely? Leave your thoughts and opinions below.
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Paid betas are bullshit. I love this site, long live Luca! 😉
Thanks, mate.
For your information, this is a fake site which isnt mada by luca
I never claimed to be “Luca Todesco”, I just happen to have a similar name to him (Gianluca).
Abandon it, what stops a developer from getting 100 subscribers at $3 today, then on the 1st you pay another $3. Then the developer decides to stop working on tweaks, you never get any support and he just made $600 off a bunch of suckers.
Now if you paid and there was no subscription, that would be a different story, or when cydia is up and running all the people that paid for Patreon get all the current tweaks for free. All new ones developed after cydia goes live will have to be bought.
Patreon is useless and you never really get what you pay for. IMO.