The shareware software market has really changed how people value software. Many hobbyists create their shareware for $5 or $10 to make some spare change. This is fine and dandy, but with the sheer amount of shareware out there (a lot of it is junk), when a commercial product (not by Adobe or Microsoft) comes out for $30 or $40, people complain that it is overpriced. This is truly sad as software isn’t cheap to create. The shareware market allowed me to personally get into software development, but I started my first product off at $15 and that was over a decade ago. Software also costs money to support and one support email/call can wipe out any profit.

I’ve seen some recent rumblings from other developers about the same thing, so I’m definitely not alone in my feelings.