Thankfully we started to migrate all SCORM based courses developed with Storyline over to a in-house developed HTML delivery system around 2017/18. When SL 2 came out, we migrated all our courses over to the new version; it broke all our courses. It took 3-months to figure out that there was a very obscure (but not communicated) change done in the SL2 navigation programming that wasn't compatible with how we dealt with course navigation (we developed to work around the short cummings of SL1 lack of restricted navigation). This was the last straw that caused us make the final decision to migrate our material. We have only 1 course left in the cue to be converted and we've been having issues with this one course since upgrading to the latest version of our LMS. Now our copy of SL3 is just to edit this one course, so I guess with support ending, this sets our deadline for converting this last course.
When we first started using Articulate around 2013 or so, it was great, all-be-it a pile of work creating courses. The learning curve was acceptable and the courses looked slick and one could do much with the programming to make a professional looking course. The forum added much value as assistance was just a forum post away and the staff at Articulate were responsive (and still are). However, we were plagued by bug after bug and were constantly fixing the courses and devising work arounds (browser issues, flash, html5 migration...). The decision to migrate away from Storyline was a difficult and costly one. I had hoped that Articulate could fix/stabilize the software one day to the point where bugs were minimized and perhaps we could return to Articulate developed SCORM courses one day.
With the demise of Storyline eminent (as per the above post), what a masterful decision migrating away was. It has taken years to migrate our courses and we're still not done. Had that decision not been made when it was we'd be hostage to the ongoing costs for years while we migrated.
I do have to hand it to Articulate, the original Storyline based on Flash was a complex software and it must have been a nightmare to deal with the EOL of Flash; striking at the very foundation of the company and flagship software.
I understand that this pay forever model is seemingly the new way of software, but when the annual price is the same as the one time price I would have paid in the past, it's too much, and causes me to loose my benefit-of-the-doubt good will. As soon as your monthly payment stops, your access to 'your material' that you spent 1000's of hours developing is gone. Thus the material you are developing, is not truly yours in the pay forever model. In the future, you won't be able to open your own files.
I wish Articulate luck moving forward.
