Hmm, I guess it’s been a while since I posted to the staff blogs.

This is one of the few times since I started writing for DT that I’ve started an article without knowing what to say. Seriously.

First of all, I should make it clear that this is not intended to be a hit piece against Phill Ryu or any of the MacHeist organizers, nor against any critics of MacHeist.

At any rate, I will attempt to discuss my feelings about MacHeist, the online mystery-solving game of sorts, which has since unleashed a software bundle of biblical proportions for the absurdly low price of $49. A quarter of the revenue is donated to charity. What about that over 75%? That’s where it gets murky.

In his criticism of MacHeist, Gus Mueller mentions how he was offered a non-negotiable, flat-rate $5,000 to participate in MacHeist. Mueller states that he declined this offer because it was a flat-rate deal and not percentage-based (i.e. a certain percentage from every bundle sold goes directly to the developers). This means that if 5,000 bundles are sold, had he accepted the offer, Mueller would have gotten the equivalent of one dollar for each bundle sold. If 10,000 bundles are sold, it drops to the equivalent of 50 cents per bundle sold.

I don’t have any reason to doubt Gus in this case, being that the MacHeist team has yet to disclose any information on how the agreements with developers were structured, and I don’t know why Gus would fabricate something like this. Hint: Phill Ryu, I would love to hear from you.

In a forum post (see #27 on this page), Phill Ryu states the following:

Second, is it [selling the bundle at such a large discount and sites like MacZOT] hurting developers as a whole, or perhaps just redistributing the wealth a bit? People who have been weighing in, including Gus Mueller of VoodooPad and Paul Kafasis of Rogue Amoeba, are sitting at the peak of the mountain, and are seeing potential customers springing for cheaper competitors looking for a better deal.

I don’t know the financial situation of Either Paul Kafasis or Gus Mueller, nor do I know the financial situation of Unsanity, RealMac Software, Inventive, or any of the other MacHeist participants, aside from the fact that Delicious Library’s launch was massively successful. That said, I don’t think it’s really Phill’s place to be “redistributing the wealth a bit.” I mean, he seems to suggest that Rogue Amoeba and Gus’ company Flying Meat are these large developers, these giants among their peers, when in reality they are likely of the same stature as Unsanity and Delicious Monster—companies whose products are featured as part of the bundle. That is, Paul and Gus are really no different than any of the other independent Mac developers out there.

I’m as big a backer of shareware on the Mac as anybody else. There’s a lot of it out there to love. If I find software to be worthwhile, I’ll buy it. In most cases, I find the software I buy to be worth every penny, even at the full price. Not everyone is like me, though, and that’s where a low-priced bundle is a good idea for attracting new customers. Apparently, Delicious Library developer Wil Shipley feels the same way. In an interview with Ars Technica, Wil had this to say:

I think events like this get a lot of publicity, so they bring in new customers that I wouldn’t reach on my own. So I’m not really sabotaging my sales; I’m supplementing them. Seriously, if you came to me and said, “I’m going to resell Delicious Library to customers on the moon, who you’ve never met and can’t reach, for $1 a copy,” I’d say, “Go for it!” I don’t care if I only get a penny if it’s a penny more than I would have gotten on my own.

I do agree with him that the people who take part in MacHeist are not necessarily the same people who would normally but his software. The question is, will the rise of promotional sites like MacHeist, MacZOT!, and MacAppADay eventually erode the perceived value of shareware? I think it depends on how many of these sites we see pop up. MacZOT! is a lot like Woot, and I don’t think Woot is really hurting other resellers much. Time will tell, I guess.

Are developers getting their fair swing at the piñata? If the MacHeist crew approached the developers with full disclosure, and the developers accepted the offer after weighing the pros and cons, then yes. Whether it was fair depends on what the MacHeist team disclosed to the developers and how the developers involved responded. What constitutes fair, of course, differs from person to person. Just because Developer A felt it was fair doesn’t mean Developer B will find it fair as well. What pissed me off more than anything in all of this controversy was seeing readers commenting on the blogs of MacHeist critics essentially calling them whiners because they happen to have issues with elements of MacHeist.

At the end of all this, I really feel that both the supporters and critics of MacHeist are right. Yes, I know that sounds like I’m wimping out on taking a stand on this issue, but thoroughout all of this, both sides have brought up some persuasive arguments. I think there are strong justifications for developers to take part in promotions like MacHeist, especially if it allows them to reach an audience that they otherwise wouldn’t have reached, and even if they don’t make much off sales during the promotion. I also feel that developers like Gus Mueller are fully justified in their criticism of MacHeist; after all, they need to pay the bills somehow, and some may not see the value in MacHeist. That’s fine. In fact, if I were a developer, I would be skeptical too, especially since promotion sites have had mixed results as far as I’ve seen. Nothing is fail-safe, of course; developers, I’d love to hear about your experiences with sites like MacHeist and MacZOT.

My mind keeps coming back to one thought that I’d like to tell all involved: listen to each other and work with each other, especialy given all the controversy surrounding this issue. The MacHeist team most certainly could learn a good deal from developers like Gus and Paul, and I’m sure Gus and Paul could learn a thing or two from the MacHeist team. So, deal or no deal?