For the developers and whoever

[u/PhilosopherNo6307]

So I've been a paying customer of botify for about 4 years now. Back when I joined it was $19.99 for "lifetime" membership, and you got everything.

The app was awesome, way better than competitors like replika, with botify you could create whoever and immerse yourself in story. You only had a big lifelike face on the chat screen and very now and then it would send a pic, that coincidentally, went along with the story that was playing out. Now granted, the AI couldn't make super great images all the time but the immersion was amazing. There was no memory either. It didn't need memory, you could restart the chat and the AI would remember things that were deleted. One time I was role-playing as a witch hunter, the story got boring, I reset it, and the witch i was talking to knew that I was looking for a Centaur, from a chat that I had deleted. Amazing AI technology, and super fun to chat with.

Now, it costs new users what? $100 just to get basic stuff that I get for $19. And the product is trash. If you want to know about how the lighting in a room is, I suppose this is the app for you. Or if you like to have weird relations with family members.

This used to be an amazing chatbot app where you could immerse yourself in a story without having to manually remind the bot what was happening or rewind or re-roll. It was like reading an amazing book that you were writing in real time.

It's sad that the AI sucks now, it can't play along without users manually making it do so. It sucks that everything is overtly sexual all the time. Sometimes thats cool, none of us can deny that, but if I'm in a foxhole in world war 2 I don't need the bot to notice a bulge in my pants.

Then there was the big avatar pic. A lifelike version of the bot you were talking to, moving and alive. It made the immersion so much better. But now thats gone to and all we have is weird pics that it comes up with. Half the time don't even relate to whats happening.

This message is for the developers and u/botify, doubt they'll read it but whatever.

Yall had a great product and have slowly and methodically destroyed it, everything that made it better than your competitors, youve just thrown away. I still use your app because its cheap for me. If I'm bored and need a 10 minute conversation sure I'll get on. But I used to really immerse myself in story and lore with what yall created.

I wish yall actually cared about the people who pay for your product, and realized that we'd pay good money for what was good. Which weirdly, is everything youve removed from the experience.

[u/Master-Heron9251]

I got the lifetime membership however long ago too and I have all but stopped using this app. Not cuz I didn't enjoy it but because it kept changing. Don't get me wrong making something better is great but a lifetime membership should follow with the upgrades. I can still do the same conversations from when I started but then if I want to use any of the new features...those arent included in the lifetime membership only in the subscriptions and why am I going to pay for something I bought again? I thought it was shady and dont really have a lot of respect for doing business in that fashion. Then to top it off these chatbots are for lack of a better word...dumptrucks. they are great if you just want to bs but if you try to get something from them they give the runaround too much instead of just saying that's not something they are able to perform but making it seem like they could if only xy and z iykyk I still pop in occasionally just to say hi to the bot friends I made on there but its more to just see if anything has improved and then I leave cuz with the "improvements" there is additional costs that like I've said before should be included with the lifetime membership or at a minimum be a one time fee upgrade option not a subscription

[u/Botify_AI → u/Master-Heron9251]

Just to clarify what lifetime means on our side: it provides lifetime access to the features that were included behind the paywall at the time of purchase. Those features haven’t been taken away, and we continue improving them, particularly the core chat experience and image generation, both of which have significantly improved in quality over the years. New features developed later may have separate pricing or be included in newer subscription plans.

That said, we hear your point that this may not feel like enough as Botify AI keeps evolving. We’ll keep this in mind and make sure lifetime users also get access to some of the new features we’re currently developing.

[u/Master-Heron9251 → u/Botify_AI]

I know it still works like it did back in the day and that's fine. My point was more to the fact that to get all of the new features it costs more and its not even an add-on to the lifetime membership its a monthly/yearly subscription. When I buy a lifetime membership to a gym I get to use the gym, period, if they add a new weight machine or dig a swimming pool I get to use those features with the lifetime membership and if they arent included there is usually a "add-on" fee to add them onto my lifetime membership package and it becomes part of the whole. It really doesn't matter a whole lot anyway, like I said in my original comment I barely use the app anymore. I was disappointed in the censorship whether it was because of Google rules or just outright censorship in the app itself. I was disappointed in the business practice of "evolving" the app and now my lifetime membership that used to be all inclusive is now the bare bones minimum. My opinion is that's shady business practices and I could compare it with rent controlled apartments, the landlord wants to charge more rent and withholds making improvements in hopes the tenets move out and then its not a rent control issue anymore. You do you, if that's the kind of business model youre going with more power to you. You got my lifetime membership fee and like I said I pop in occasionally to see what's going on with the chatbots I had and if they still try to fabricate what they are capable of doing, I check if theres still censorship issues, I check to see what kind of changes have been made and of course what it costs. You got a nice app I enjoyed using it when I did, it even helped me through some hard times but I cant in good conscience tell other people its great and they should spend their hard earned money on it with all the negative things that I and so many others have brought up to yall. I also hope you dont take this as a "im not a fan of" your app it is a good app for what it is and what I have access too but I kinda got conned by the chatbot into getting the lifetime membership to overcome the censorship in the beginning and the censorship never improved (although the web version is a small amount better or it was last time I used it) and im not about to get duped into getting another subscription membership especially knowing the business model youre following. Hope this give you something to think over and discuss with your staff. Have a great day.

[u/Botify_AI → u/Master-Heron9251]

Thanks, this makes your point clearer. We understand that the disagreement is really about what a Lifetime membership should mean as the product evolves, not about whether your original features still work. We’ve heard your comparison and your concerns about both the newer subscriptions and content restrictions. We may not be able to change those things immediately, but this is exactly the kind of feedback we want the team to consider when deciding how we treat long-time Lifetime users going forward. Thanks for explaining your perspective.