Applause has backed down: Purchased Voice Dream features will stay

About this, thank you!

Hoping they don’t change their minds (again). Also hoping, that they will figure out a sustainable model that will work for both them and us the users to keep the app going. I bought many of the voice as IAPs and would be very happy to buy new features and maybe somewhere along the road even subscribe to access new features.

Well is good that I do not need to pay. I got all the apps that are part of it. Several years ago when they had a special deal for all of them.

While this is a good move on their part, it was likely only done because they knew they had violated the AppStore guidelines and VDR had already been reported to Apple. Doubtless new users will still be forced to subscribe, though I would be glad to be proven wrong on this.

I personally think it's sad that they essentially had to be ganged up on in order to see the foolishness, if not the utter wrong-headedness, of their decision,. Still, at least they were made to see sense.

This is a definite win for users in the short term, but it might still turn into a loss if Applause runs out of money in the long run. They (the devs) must now come up with an incentive for users to dig into their wallets because if that does not happen then we will all lose the app.

Already deleted my account and the app. Not creating a new one and re-uploading my library (would that even work with a new account?) Once my trust is broken, it's gone. I haven't touched Fleksy or its reincarnation since the original went inaccessible, and I won't be touching this again either.

They admitted their mistake and deserve to be given a chance to earn my subscription.

they said kindle support was meant to be here already so where is it? also, how long do people have to feed them our money before we see new features? i to, have deleted the app before the anouncement.

They said it was coming. Give it a year. There is no rush to subscribe. They have a groups on groups.io you can subscribe to. They are trying to do better.

I purchased the app back in the day. Wrote to them last week suggesting that I would subscribe if they made this change but that if not, I would have to consider what to do. I pointed out that I am a higher education senior lecturer and act as an academic external validator for higher educations institutions in the UK and elsewhere. I reminded them that hitherto, VoiceDream was something I unhesitatingly recommended to my students who were blind, dyslexic or who simply found the reading very burdensome. That's a whole lot of law students, believe me. I implied that I, and others in a similar position, would need to revisit this if already purchased functionality were removed. Hat tip to them for lsitening to the feedback from myself and others. I'm not too fussed about the motive for now. as it is, I can afford to subscribe and will do so to give them the chance to show me what shiny features I will now be getting. As others have said, they deserve a chance. This is possibly as close to admitting they got it wrong as they can realistically get.

I don't know why the heck they didn't simply allow people to continue using the app in it's current state if they wanted to (as the app store guidelines require), then offer an optional half price or lower tier for those who wanted just bugfixes and updates to keep up with new IOS releases,, with the additional 5 dollar per month tier being just for those who wanted the new features. Split it into two apps if that's easier. They would probably claim that this would have been too complicated, but you can easily add a plain English description to in app purchases that really covers everything well if you take your time to do it right, and craft media releases that explain things further while being there to answer people's questions. Also, the annual only subscription option is just out of touch in 2024. One of the few advantages of subscription to the end user is that you can spread the cost out so that it has a much lower up front impact. That's precisely why most monthly subscriptions offer a discounted yearly one as well, to entice people into a purchase that is higher risk to the customer and higher reward for the company; something that they likely wouldn't want to do without an incentive.
Additionally, I still maintain that 5 dollars per month is too much when this app is more mainstream than other blindness apps and the burden therefore can be shared between a greater number of users. They also supposedly have other apps in their portfolio, so Voicedream really shouldn't have to carry their company so much unless something is seriously wrong at applause group HQ. but I don't know their true finances in the end...
For a company who say this is their whole thing, they really suck at it. Just a complete cluster all around. Removing features and forcing people into a subscription is totally against the app store guidelines which is probably much more to do with why they backed off rather than the community pressure, because people started reporting the app. Communication sucked, and they kept asking us to direct how this would go via email feedback, despite the fact that half of the things we had a problem with were complete business 101 no brainers that they really shouldn't need to rely on the customer for in the first place. Maybe they are nice people who just don't know what the heck they're doing, but they completely through away their trust with all but the most naive users, and it's a shame, if indeed they were planning on useful new features. I hope that they don't abandon the app entirely now and allow it to fall behind new IOS releases to the point that it gets removed from the app store.

Feedback from the customer base, as well as an interview by Jonathan Mosen during his "living blindfully" podcast that was recently released, have gotten results!! I agree with Dennis Long on both of his posts. I also think that this company, by offering a web page for customers to subscribe from rather than subscribing through Appls, in order to not have to pay the 30% charge, would break their agreement with Apple, could have gotten them into trouble. I will not subscribe to this app because of their lack of communication throughout this entire process with us. This was brought up by Jonathan Mosen during his interview, and an appology was given, but until they proove that they can be trusted, I don't trust them based on past lack of trust with us. I will consider subscribing after they have earned my trust through communication. Fool me once, shame on me. Fool me twice, you get no money.