gramps
7827d239e2
The commercial plan was spread over five documents written in five different weeks, and they contradicted each other: product.md sold the Store, decisions.md called the Store dead then re-opened, Distribution.md (736 lines) still described Polar as a download host, MARCOM.md quoted "no subscription" next to a paid tier, and README.md promised "free forever". An outsider could not tell what ships. docs/ai/commercial.md is now the only place money is decided: free = whole app at a 921,600 px / 30 fps output profile covering the recording as well as the stream; Pro = $10/mo or $400 lifetime through Polar, key bound to the buyer's YouTube channel ID via a claim page, 2 activations, 7–14 day lease with offline grace, fail closed, never downgrade a running stream; one portable zip + winget primary, Steam and the Store parked; Azure Trusted Signing (~$9.99/mo), no EV; Founding 200 promo; ~$135/yr costs; anti-piracy posture and what is permanently rejected. Everything else now points at it instead of restating it: - product.md — money sections replaced with pointers; packaging rewritten to winget-first, Store parked; signing updated to Trusted Signing. - decisions.md — graveyard with cause of death for free-forever, the Store ordering, the updater, and the 2026-10-30 reversal of the quality-ceiling rejection. - Distribution.md — rewritten to release mechanics only (artifact, GitHub Releases, winget manifest, signing, checklist, takedown): 736 → 120 lines. - TASKS.md — TASK 54 rewritten, TASK 48's route settled, TASK 10 superseded, five new rows (entitlement seam, output-profile gate, licence UI, system messages, packaging). - README.md — "free forever" replaced with the real split. - capture.md — obs-backgroundremoval is GPL-3.0 and so licence-INCOMPATIBLE since the proprietary EULA; the old "compatible" line was falsified by that change. - TASKS/task-10, task-48, task-51, task-54 — superseded-banner at the top of each, so none of them reads as current policy. - HANDOFF.md — rewritten: plan settled, next code unit is the entitlement seam. MARCOM.md and MONETIZATION.md (gitignored) were corrected in place: policy pointer at the top of each, the flash removed from every live claim, the Polar fee break-even corrected to ~$900/mo, and the projections flagged as written against a dead model.
80 lines
5.7 KiB
Markdown
80 lines
5.7 KiB
Markdown
# TASK 10 — Monetization: watermark-only paid delta (branding flash)
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> ⛔ **RETIRED — 2026-10-30.** Both halves of this file are dead: the watermark/branding-flash
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> delta (retired 2026-10-30) and Store IAP as the billing provider (Store is parked, third channel,
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> 2026-10-31). The paid delta is **output quality** now, sold through **Polar**. Live policy:
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> [`docs/ai/commercial.md`](../docs/ai/commercial.md); cause of death:
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> [`docs/ai/decisions.md`](../docs/ai/decisions.md). Nothing here is a build instruction.
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> Catalog: [`TASKS.md`](../TASKS.md) — status and requirements live here.
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**Goal:** a **paid tier that removes the branding flash and nothing else.** Every feature is free
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— Alerts, social bar slots, voice filters, TRAX, recording, analytics. The free tier is the *full*
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app. ⛔ **There is no feature gating, ever** — revenue argument, not taste: the free tier's reach
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is the funnel, and the flash is an ad running inside other people's content, so a free user with a
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flash every 30–60s is already paying in exposure.
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**⚠️ STATUS: THIS IS A TEARDOWN, NOT A BUILD (2026-09-27).** The billing provider is
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**Microsoft Store IAP**, not Polar. Everything below describing Polar is **dead** and is retained
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only as history. **Do not resurrect any of it.** The teardown's file-by-file list lives in
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[`TASKS/task-48-distribution-msix.md`](task-48-distribution-msix.md) item 0 — **work from there,
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not from this file.**
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**Pricing — ✅ DECIDED 2026-09-27: `$10/mo` subscription, or `$400` lifetime. No annual.**
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| Tier | Price | Net after 15% | Role |
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|---|---|---|---|
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| Free | $0 | — | Everything, plus the branding flash. The funnel. |
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| **Pro monthly** | **$10/mo** | ~$8.50/mo | The default. Low-risk entry. |
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| **Pro lifetime** | **$400** | ~$340 | The hedge. Committed / subscription-hostile buyers. |
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- **15% Store revenue share, subscriptions included** — verified from the ADA v8.10 PDF, §6(b)(i).
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Net receipts are after VAT/GST, so commission is not paid on pass-through tax.
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- **Break-even is month 40**, so the two tiers barely compete — which is why lifetime is safe to
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offer at launch rather than saving it for later.
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- ⛔ **No annual tier** — Microsoft does not pro-rate and the developer cannot refund the
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forfeited remainder. ⛔ **No `.99` prices.** ⛔ **No discounted upgrade SKU.**
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- **ADA §6(h): raising the price disables auto-renew ⇒ `$10` is effectively locked for life.**
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- ⛔ **Superseded pricing, do not cite:** the 2026-09-21 one-time model (`$29` founder → `$49`
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list lifetime) and the earlier `$49.99/yr → $99/yr` subscription.
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**Related work — monetization awareness (2026-09-01, ungated, free):** this task's billing is the
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*payer* side; the *product* also carries built-in, ungated monetization awareness for every creator —
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reward-event capture (all 7 `liveChatMessage` reward event types → canonical `RewardEvent` → SQLite
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persistence), per-session/broadcast reports (members, Super Chat $, stickers, gifts, milestones — the
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in-app replacement for the emailed "stream activity report"), and a journey tracker (position % +
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ETA vs. versioned, date-aware YPP thresholds; the Tier-2 bar doubles for new applicants 2027-02-01).
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Details and design notes: `ai.md` → Monetization. This is tracked as related work under this task's
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narrative, not a separate task number — it ships in its own code slices with one integration test each.
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**Scope: v1** (2026-09-01 complete-v1 ruling — there is no v1.x): slice order = reward-event capture →
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session report → journey tracker → Alerts (TASK 3 item 20).
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**Business details (pricing, Partner Center product declaration) in `MONETIZATION.md` (gitignored).**
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### Status: 🔶 TEARDOWN — steps 1–7 shipped under Polar, all now to be removed
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Steps 1–7 below are a **record of what was built**, not a description of what ships. The Polar
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licensing path is being deleted because Store IAP supplies the same bit from the OS entitlement.
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1. ⛔ **Billing provider** — was Polar (polar.sh). **DELETED.** The product, checkout link, and the
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discount codes `LLAMAFOUNDER` / `LLAMA50` no longer exist. Store IAP products are declared in
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**Partner Center**, not Polar.
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2. ⛔ **License key entry + verification UI** — was the About-overlay swap panel
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("Enter License Key"). **DELETING.**
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3. ⛔ **Offline entitlement** — was `LayoutStore` Settings (`LicenseKey`, `LicenseValidatedAt`,
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`IsPremium`) + a 14-day offline grace period + startup re-validation. **DELETING.** The OS
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supplies license state, so the entire offline-grace machine goes with it — along with the whole
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"network flaky → app thinks I'm expired" bug class.
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4. ✅ **BrandFlash → watermark toggle** — `IsPremium` setter flips `BrandFlashEnabled = !value`, so
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the flash stops the moment the entitlement flips. **This survives the teardown.** Under Store IAP
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`IsPremium` is derived from the Store entitlement rather than a remote HTTP call. One bit,
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locally cached, refreshed by the OS. ⚠️ **This is the whole product surface of the paid tier.**
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5. ✅ **Remove social slot locks** — all 6 social bar slots open to everyone. **Survives.**
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6. ⛔ **"Unlock Premium" button** — `PremiumUrl` pointed at Polar checkout. **DELETING**; the Store
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handles purchase. Paid users see zero license UI.
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7. ⛔ **Licensing model / renewal-lapse path** — already dead before the Store ruling (a perpetual
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key never expires). Now superseded again: **Store IAP has no keys at all.**
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8. ✅ **Velopack auto-updates** — NuGet package + bootstrap in `App.xaml.cs`. **DELETED
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2026-10-22 (TASK 48 slice 3)** — a compliance action, not cleanup: the updater downloaded
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*and executed*, and Store policy 10.2.2 does not permit it. The Store updates the app
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instead. Guard: `ytLive.Tests/StorePackagingTests.cs`. |