While I haven't done any development on Deckbox in the past year, I have followed closely its evolution as I have to stand Sebi's moods each day as he curses at the code
and I have advised him during the development.
Reading everything posted here just reminds me of the Diablo 3 forum posts back when they launched (eg. "They broke Diablo", "this sucks", etc.) but I can't say I'm very surprised. As a former MtG player myself, I admit the amazon prices are not close to an ideal solution.
To address some of the questions raised here, as it seems that some of you don't see the big picture.
- Deckbox is not a big company (3 people)
- the ads we had didn't support the tiny company
- donations wouldn't have been enough to support it either
- we have taken into consideration adding premium-like features, but that would have been conflicting with Wizards of the Coast and that's not a company we want to be arguing with
- we have considered many other monetisation possibilities
- the marketplace was chosen as a solution for monetisation because it makes sense and fits in the whole logic of Deckbox
- yes, we expected TcgPlayer to not be happy, but we didn't expected them to be unhappy so soon :-)
I am not trying to get your sympathy or pity, I am simply explaining why proper market research wasn't done, why we chose to add the martketplace and why we added the Amazon prices. I understand this ruins some people's trades at the moment and we are in a less than comfortable place right now, but as mentioned before, it is not a permanent solution.
So please, bear with us, we understand and we are working on it 