Man, with the combined effects of corona virus time warp and the 420 holiday over the weekend, I completely forgot to buy csc v_v so bummed! I left it on the purchase page and never went through with it :/

I know a lot of Real Life department stores that have monthly sales to keep the business going! If Subeta is going to stop having the bonus weekend I see sales going down! I looked forward to that weekend and bought most of my CSC then. AFTER the WARDROBE disaster and the virus plague I have not bought hardly anything! I am waiting to see if the site crashes or recovers.

@Reaper
I read "crafting the messaging" as 'this [wording] is a work in progress', not necessarily that there's an already planned announcement in progress. Regardless, this would hardly be the first time there's been a promise of info to come that wasn't followed through on. And again, there have been fairly numerous past incidents where this would have been helpful (plot boss bugs, rule clarifications). I've asked before, I just chose to make it a direct ping this time.

@Tribunal
Keith's first reply here notes that they're working on an official message explaining more about this, but he was jumping in so that people could get a brief answer now from staff and so that Amber didn't get overwhelmed trying to figure out how to answer the "why no bonus weekend in May??????" questions that were popping up.

I'd like to think they learned from the last time and will post an official news post as soon as they're ready to outline it. The announcement here is just a heads up that info is coming and to not expect the May bonus weekend sale so that people aren't blindsided come May.

@lethargic
Most CW releasers price their releases based on submission costs so that they don't have to pay out of pocket for batches. It is rare for anyone to price their items beyond 100 csc over the CW shop base price (normally - there are outliers, but most releasers aren't trying to price gouge anyone). If submission costs come down, prices will usually come down accordingly (it happened after we went from one flat price to tiered pricing based on type/size/detail of item - prices for smaller things came down to reflect the lower submission cost). It'll just depend on how much happens with the changes on the submitter end.

If the only time people buy csc is during the sale that happens every single month, is csc really on sale?

I 100% agree with Paddy on the subscription via paypal or gift cards options, not credit cards only. I personally don't have a credit card and would need to use amazon gift cards or paypal for a subscription. I also do not trust most sites with credit card information anyways, so I can understand how @Paddy feels about this.

I think people are seeing CWS prices lowered and thinking that the prices of actual CWS will be lowered. Maybe I'm assuming this wrongly but I think Keith more meant the actual submission process prices are going to be end up being lowered, since that is what a lot of the creators have asked for currently and in the past. Plus prices of the CWS are set by the CW shop owners themselves. While sure lowering the prices of cw process, "could" be reflected in what a CW shop owner places that item for in their shop. Put, still at the end of the day the actual cost of purchasing a cw is determined by the owners and creators.

With that being said, I have seen some of the suggestion to this newer subscription service model, and at the moment I do feel like its too heavily awarded to the actual person who purchases a subscription and those who purchase csc alone. Time will tell how this system develops.

(and as a side note, I'd consider a subscription if I could do that through paypal and not have to give my card details out to the site directly - I know "it's secure" and all that, but I just prefer to do things like that through paypal where possible!)

That makes sense to not have the bonus weekend, and to lower prices across the board as a standard thing - that'd help me to not feel I have to save up getting any CSC until the bonus weekend too (I'd prefer to spread out some small CSC amounts across the month) :)

And seeing as the pet slots were already reduced, if only the purchase limit could be increased :innocent: (don't shout - I know it's realllllllllly unlikely to happen!), then that'd give me a reason to splurge on a little more CSC as well :P

Hey @Keith can y'all put staff news comments in the admin post feed or otherwise make them more obvious somehow? It's happened before that important info (plot related info including steps and bugs come to mind) is basically buried in this hard to notice/hard to link to place. This is kind of a big deal discussion and a lot of people who might never see it would probably like to have a chance to follow along or chime in. Especially since it's gone off and expanded on the actual subject of the news post - not a bad thing inherently, just contributes to making it easier to miss.

If this happens, would it be possible to also sell a "gift subscription" so someone could purchase one for someone else?

I'd be more likely to get a subscription once the ability to receive Loyalty Points from it is possible, will that be implemented around the same time that you add the other benefits for it?

KEITH, that would be great, to lower prices across the board, but when you say subscription service, I think of a my Prime account. (Yearly payment of $$$, no shipping, 1 or 2 day delivery) or my ‘monthly’ subscription of $$, and I download as many songs/albums/music that I want/can find.

I’ll be interested to see how this works out.

@Ambition Yes, you're describing a sale. A sale isn't something that happens on a weekend every single month, like clockwork.

The Black Friday Sale is a great example of something that yes, is predictable, but gives us the opportunity to sell a lot more because it feels like an event. The bonus weekend isn't that, it's just the smart time to buy your CSC that you would have purchased anyway.

I hope that in the next few weeks we can show what we mean by this, the reason that it's in this news post is so that everyone has lots of time before knowing that this is coming.

@Witchy I'm not sure that you read my post. We want to do this to lower prices across the board, we want to be able to lower prices for the entire month, since most people typically purchase CSC during the bonus weekend.

Moving it to a subscription model means that, like you, we will be able to accurately budget and understand where we can afford to make changes, hire people, give raises, etc. Right now it's almost impossible to do that because "a lot" of purchases are going to happen on the weekend that we make the "bonus" weekend, and very few purchases are going to happen outside of that.

I'll be real, the only potential temptation of buying csc was the bonus items (pretty). So I'm glad those items are still being considered in some way, shape, or form.

Also adding, for the sake of the topic of income.... all things considering I don't see a foreseeable future where I put money here. Rewind to a few months ago I'd still eagerly be awaiting non-unique pet names, ready to slam it hard; after the fiasco with the wardrobe, though, I'd be sceptical to spend anything even if non-unique names magically happened (ie: I don't expect it anymore).

Everyone knows the wardrobe (CWs, honestly) is the breadwinner and anything else is just fluff. I'd have to see a thriving CW market boom before considering giving money, sale or no sale on csc /:

@Keith and other staff people

I am just going to point out here: I shop sales in RL and they are indeed predictable. They happen about 6-8 times a year in most locations for a variety of services (and they are announced a week in advance for the larger chains, not mere hours/min). Even the ice cream/yogurt shoppe I visit has a periodic sale on products every few weeks. I usually do not shop or buy anything that is non-essential unless it is on sale, usually 30% off or more is what I wait for. I wait, even if it means I miss out on it, because there will always be more things similar to the item I am looking to buy.

I also wait for Black Friday (or Cyber Monday) for any of my bigger purchases, no matter what.

Wow. Well that sucks. I only get 1 check a month. I have to pay all my bills and anything extra,that I might want, out of that one check. I count on the bonus weekend to get my csc for the month. I only have so much. The bonus weekend let’s me usually squeak by with Just enough.
My money is gone, a week after I get it.

This sounds like you’re going to stop bonus weekend completely. You took away discounts, and now bonus weekend?

Sales should be just that, sales, not something that you expect to happen at the same time every month (or at least, over a weekend in the month) that you can wait to purchase on. Users who don't know the pattern who are new are the ones who get "hurt" by not knowing to buy CSC then.

Heh. There’s not so many of us that are willing to offer them this information? (Newbies)

And all of us get paid every week we can buy whenever? (Not me!)

It’s a shame that it’s not ‘sustainable’ for you. I guess the thousands of dollars a year I spend here doesn’t help you.
My family (mother, aunts, etc) always saved all year long for the Christmas sales.
We counted on those sales.

I hear you! We want to keep the bonus items as part of the deal of subscribing monthly. There is another thing that I'm noticing on this thread (that i've noticed before) that would also get resolved by this:

"Oh no, I just bought CSC!" - I've seen this come up before and the response from users who've been here awhile is "you've got to wait for the bonus weekend!" - this isn't fair and it isn't normal.

Sales should be just that, sales, not something that you expect to happen at the same time every month (or at least, over a weekend in the month) that you can wait to purchase on. Users who don't know the pattern who are new are the ones who get "hurt" by not knowing to buy CSC then.

Not everyone can afford to buy CSC regularly (like me), so some of us prefer to wait until Bonus Weekend or Black Friday. However, I would be more inclined to buy CSC outside of one of those events if certain retired Cash Shop items that I want were ocasionally brought back for a limited time, as some people have mentioned here. That might be a good way to still get people to buy CSC when they can't afford a subscription.

oof just getting the of it all then huh

I actually just loved the cash shop bonus weekend items, they were unique and special (mostly because the art quality is always superb on them!). How will the site go about getting awesome items like that to us? We usually have to wait many months for cash shop items. Outside of the boutique, most of the new items are very specific to being wig coupons, vanity lines, or minion related sets. Another cool CS feature that could be utilized for increased revenue would be the costume trunks. When will we ever get a new cool costume trunk? I think those are a cool feature to have.

This is probably the wrong place to ask but I just topped up my account with two purchases of CSC and for that I've now got two . Is it possible to exchange one of them for a ?

Just throwing out an idea, so feel free to disregard if it's unfair or other. How about revolving some of the old CSC weekend bonus items in a sale periodically?

Stuff like are in the shop for 500 CSC... if we missed the chance to get it for free in the past maybe we could have the incentive to buy each of them at a discount for a limited time, at different times? There are so many things in that shop I'm drooling over, but haven't bought even when I can afford them because CSC disappears quickly and I'm hoping their SP prices go down instead.

Despite monthly CSC sales, I have hardly bought Over the last few years. If I do purchase, I buy for the bonus items. The reason I have stopped buying CSC is because you made changes to monthly collections. It's now almost all wearables, so if there isn't a wearable I want, and there usually isn't because the collections are themed, thus the wearbales are often not very useable, then I have no reason to buy CSC because you took all the collectables out. Once I had a steady income, I used to buy them often for stickers and plushies but now there is no point. I don't even pay attention to them anymore. I will be buying this month because you are retiring those books.

Will you be getting rid of bonus items? They are far more motivating for me than the extra CSC. I bought CSC twice in order to get both the Spinel items and I have done that on several prior ocassions too.

I'd do a submssion - especially if this would include eosthing close ot the GA -
I love my GA perks. I wold not want to miss the autopricer.

I would miss bonus weekend - I buy whenever I need, but the big part I usually buy during bonus weekend.
I woudl still buy, though

Let me preface with this: I understand why keith wants to get rid of bonus weekend. But personally without the bonus weekend, I literally have no motivation to put money into this site, especially with all the site stability issues lately. That and I hardly ever have money anymore. I'd have to see what changes were made to the gold accounts to determine whether I'd buy one but as is, it's a pass. As for cw costs, again it's a gonna have to wait to see how much its lowered. Cost isn't really an issue for me, it's the lack of interesting designs and the fact I miss out on the ones that are interesting because I can only get on once a day, if that. But, yeah. Wait and see for me.

It would be nice to see something like this for those of us that don't have any of those and use credit cards to buy CSC.

Interesting ideas for change! I can see why they'd make sense from a business standpoint. I know many will still only buy CSC during sales/bonuses, but hopefully any changes will bring in more revenue for the site.

Any idea on the timeline for the price changes at this stage?

Yes, I really love the monthly bonus items, often more then the items in the monthly collection, and I hope they can still be a thing somehow (just not for, like, buying $50 CSC a month or something, please ^^; ). I was looking forward to emerald items next month especially… :(

If you don't have a bonus weekend where CSC cost less, could you still have a bonus item for buying CSC? I really like that and it is a motive for me to buy some CSC every month (getting the exclusive item) and I'd probably buy it then even if it wasn't discounted.

Or alternatively, keep having 'bonus weekends' but not have them have a CSC discount, only an item, and then have 'CSC Sale' periods that are just when you need a cash influx, but somewhat randomly?

I just need that Diamond Bunny for my HA ugghhh sadly buying csc on my country is almost imposible T_T

Omg I'm so mad, I just bought CSC like 2 days ago ;-;

And, of course, the paypal method is the item I want (for my bunny loving pet's TC)!

Figures... I bought all my CSC yesterday! :cry:

@pointycatears

Ah no, I'm wrong, the loyalty points were for the extra CSC I had tucked in there. Never mind. I'd like to see that implemented too, then!

Aww, dangit, I just bought CSC the other day! If only I had waited... :(

@pointycatears

I think subscriptions do give loyalty points now, you just have to check your card after it gets billed for them to proc.

May I ask if there won't be extra bonus items also?
I only would like to know this because I do this monthly Cash Shop Bonus Items HA Contest for my group
and if we don't have them regularly now, I have to think of another idea. :-)

I am glad to see some changes being discussed lowering the price of CWs. I hope staff can make this happen in a way that helps both the buyers and releasers. I'm excited to see some changes being made to the subscriptions as well. Love the bunny item.

I'm assuming the Loyalty Cards will continue as normal? After reading what Keith said about encouraging people to subscribe more, I went looking for the forum thread about wanting subscriptions to give Loyalty Points since they apparently currently don't, will that start to happen with the next Loyalty Card (which should be next month), or will it take a bit longer to work on?

@Keith

Depending on how much you lower CWs, this could breathe new life into the CW market. This is something so many of us have begged for, for years so if this becomes reality you’re gonna have a lot of happy CW creators who will likely buy csc to submit things that never filled. Thank you for even considering this because we’ve all wanted this for so long.

Aw, no bonus weekend in may?! I've only been buying csc during bonus weekends because with the exchange rate(canadian) it's just not worth it at any other time. And now the dollar is the lowest it's been in a long time...it just sucks all around :(

@Ligress

Yeah, lower prices will help with that a lot and I'm looking forward to those changes. Fingers crossed!

I can honestly say if CWs DO get a lowered price there will be a LOT more of us submitting mass amounts of items!

I’m just concerned the lowering of the prices won’t make up for the large amounts cw wearables end up being. 50 csc off wouldn’t do much for a cw that was 700 is what I’m getting at? Like I mean if cws were reduced accordingly as well... not so much of a worry. I do get wanting to have more of a 1:1 ratio but maybe there could be a discount in ccs built in that gold account on cws to make it worth it? I already know I save pennies at beginning to make the middle count more. I just worry it will be drastic and I can’t say “oh well let’s buy 50 bc I get 70, it will be, I’ll buy 20 now and maybe not bother later this month bc it’s not like it matters, then it gets later in the month and bills are there and I’m like nah, I rather ( go to a movie, buy a switch, etc) mid month and have nothing to spend st the end bc I don’t really care enough ( to me I am personally excited by the sale and end up overbuying more then not). If you want me interested in subscription give us pet slots options( even if they were ccs buyable for less) and other things, I could care less about auto pricing and such tbh, I’m here for collections and dressing up my ha and pet slots xD xD

Thank you staff for clarifying in comments the motivation and such it’s a great way to show us you are listening and it’s very appreciated. I know my comments are a drop in the bucket so I know all I can do is hope to point out there is something to the saving up for the shinies mentality in impulse purchasing too lol. I would love to hear what certain artists that release cws feel about it once it’s clearer what “making them cheaper” actually means ^^ ty Keith and amber for the messages, again. It’s immensely important after the whole mess earlier to feel like you want to build back the community and continue to update us :) I love subeta and it is hard to see you all struggle and I hope things continue improving and being a shelter in this crazy world

re: what Keith said, I know personally I would be much more inclined to buy CSC if I knew my CSC could stretch farther, if that makes sense? Not that I don't buy it now, but I think it would encourage me to buy more CSC if I could get a larger quantity of items with it. Right now it just doesn't feel like the value is there sometimes, outside of sales (especially with the exchange rate for non-Americans).

@Amber
That's great to hear! I'm looking forward to seeing how that shakes out on your end. :)

A lot of the things I want atm seem to be costume pieces that aren't tied to costume trunks or delish, so they're either super expensive or just aren't there. I'd love to get a shot at them!

@Ligress

My impression of what Keith is saying, in needing to know what they actually have on hand to pay expenses, is that you buying a smaller amount but it being closer to the true revenue they will actually get is what would be most helpful to Subeta. I just bought 50 bucks worth of CSC and got something like 7000 Cash Shop Credits for it. When Subeta goes to look at the amount of money they have versus the CSC circulating, they didn't get 70+ bucks from me, they got 50 minus any fees and taxes. The more sales and extra generation of CSC available outside of one-for-one paid-for credits, the more calculations Subeta has to do to figure out what their money is and the less people are actually buying from them.

I could be wrong, I'd appreciate corrections if I am and staff should delete this if they feel it's not helpful, but this is what I'm getting from Keith's explanation.

If would join a monthly subscription if there were more bonuses for that instead of just buying CWs and using them for gold account here and there...
Definitely the right tactic to get more subscribers by offering more, than even regular gold accounts (who aren't subscribing) have.

@Blake Rotating out/in items is on my list! I'm working on getting some older things out of the shop at the moment and bringing back different things for short periods of time.

Aw damn, I already bought my CSC allotment because I thought bonus weekend was gonna be a bit later in the month. Guess I'd better take advantage anyway, if this is the last one for now.

@Keith
This is probably a bit out of left field: I still think removing the five bonus pet slots from the GA was a mistake. I haven't been back long since that decision was made, and what the GA offers right now isn't a ton of value in comparison to what it was back in the early days-- it's basically just a handful of minor QOL things that are easy to live without. The only must haves from it right now are the autopricer and inventory space, with the rest of the bonuses falling under the "nice, but i only need this situationally" category.

I'm not sure how you'd fix that, but it's why I'm buying a medal month to month instead of subscribing right now (and I sub, generally, because I adblock but am enjoying the content).

I would also like to input that there are a bunch of CS items I would love to buy right now, but can't since they're all retired/unavailable (so I would have to wait for BF and hope they turned up then). Perhaps it would be worth rotating item stock more frequently, like you do with the monthly boxes and challengers?

disregard my comment, Korin came to the rescue LOL

I’m all for lowering the prices on wearables but I honestly can only afford to buy most my credits usually once a month and that’s the middle, sale or not. Without sale? I’ll just probably buy less. . I wait for the sale often to max the amount I can get of them sweet wearables ( which many users also discount the Cws. ) But I also buy much more then if it was higher just because the bonus is SO tempting. I would definitely buy less I think if it was split up into being the same price always bc those weeks because both end of month and beginning of month we too, have bills. Middle of the month is when we have the spending money. While it’s good in theory I wonder how good in practice it will be to get rid of the middle of the month sale? I really enjoy the bonus credits, and it would feel a bit like a punishment to get rid of it in the future ( I stopped buying lots on Black Friday when the pet slots stopped going on sale for instance). Just my two cents dunno if it will make a difference.

I don't quite understand that (too complicated for me), but I'll take your word for it. Does this mean that Bonus Weekend will now only happen occasionally instead of every single month?

Sounds like some common sense business decisions 👍

Wow, ok, actually need both of these. Luckily the Paypal option is usually super cheap for a good majority of the time.

That charm is so cute o-o

Jumping in so that Amber doesn't have to answer questions on the bonus weekend! We're crafting the messaging on this, and some of the other changes, but there are a couple of reasons (and I'd like to make sure they're available outside of this post)

Companies rely on revenue to survive (not to sound glib) and that requires having some levers to be able to control that revenue when you're having down times (like, say, a pandemic). One of those levers is being able to have sales, or make people feel like they're getting a good deal while they're feeling financial pressure. We can't really do sales anymore because they're all expected. Everyone knows there will be one weekend a month to buy CSC in to get a bonus, and that in November we'll have a big blowout black friday sale. That means a majority fo our customers just wait until those times to purchase, which makes it impossible for us to plan or know how much our revenue will be and we've got a lot of expenses!

Another is we're taking a look at our prices in general. I think we can lower prices across the board on things like CWs and gold accounts, while trying to pivot most people toward monthly subscriptions by giving more benefits and bonuses to those subscriptions.

I'd much rather do that, so that the price on the page is what we actually expect to sell things at instead of right now where the price on the page during the bonus weekend is what we really plan to sell things at since that is when most users choose to buy from the cash shop. It isn't sustainable for us as a business, unfortunately.

wish i could buy pet slots with csc ;-; i need like 4 more.

Also curious about why not in May. Do we need to stock up on CSC for special sales or discounts in May?

Awwwwww, why no bonus in May? :(

Dang, just spent $30!!

Yea I'm curious why no may CSC bonus?

@Raven @pointycatears

Yeah, why no bonus weekend in may?

It doesn't feel like long since the last Bonus Weekend. But why won't there be one in May? Is it because you have something else planned, like how you don't do it in November because of Black Friday? I'm just curious.

How come no bonus weekend in May?

sweet, fanks! just bought 1,000 csc~ i needed that charm like i needed that 7th slim-jim i ate last night.

Amazing!