EDIT: Well, I just came back after a few months to get tunes for the latest update cars and was surprised to see everything gone and it's now behind a paywall. Last I checked the old tunes were still here and only new ones are on patreon. Guess someone pissed off the big man and he decided to go the nuclear option. Internet fame really does funny things to people.
Honestly, I get it's tough times financially for a lot of people, especially in that part of the world. And obviously it's a lot of effort to make these tunes. Even more so because of the repeated physics changes by PD. But what's already put out is already there for free for years, just leave them be. New tunes and adjusted tunes for new physics can be on patreon. Or maybe even make it time limited on patreon, and maybe after a month it can be released here. Or put the tunes here behind a monetized link (although that might be against AUP, idk).
I would pay to gain access to the whole library, but not on a subscription basis because I just do not come here regularly anymore for that to be worthwhile. There are lots of tunes that I'm just not interested in, and even those that are of interest sometimes don't fit my needs perfectly so I need to tinker a bit. I don't really tune to PP, and also praiano never does FF or rally tunes. And with most of his tunes having extreme rake, sometimes the front bottoms out (like at Deep Forest's massive dip before the front straight) and it's pretty much useless.
Maybe $20-30 for lifetime access is reasonable (similar to GTP Premium lifetime sub). But $8.5 per month is a bit steep. I saw he already has 1000+ paid subs so that works out to $102,000 a year. And that's for 2-3 tunes a day which for someone of his caliber probably takes 2-3 hours max (maybe even less for just physics updates and tunes for old cars that are just different PP). His time is worth something but not that much. And he already has the console and game from years ago, doesn't even need PS Plus to just tune offline.
Lastly there's the question of what are these tunes worth? Tunes in this game are not needed for a competitive basis. The AI is dog slow and can be beaten even without tuning. Sport mode mostly has locked settings (and on those rare occasions that we have a tuning race, you can still be competitive without one, or even just a few basic tweaks). None of the official championships require tuning. That just leaves online leagues. So I question the need of people who are willing to pay that much for these tunes for not much tangible benefit. I looked around on youtube and found a few good tunes for the latest update cars, so no shortage of replacement there.
Anyway, I'm happy for praiano's new source of income, all the best to him and his family. And those willing to pay for tunes, well you do you. It's your money and you pay for what you think is worthwhile. But I won't be joining the bandwagon. Thank you praiano for all your work all these years. I've been using your tunes since GT Sport. But all good things come to an end. Nothing but respect and good memories of this garage, but this is where we part ways. Peace
