@JuliaJons, note that you can not transfer a Spine Professional or Spine Essential license to someone else as per our license agreement.
Unfortunately we don't provide discounts because the Spine license provides all updates for life. Also, giving out discounts would not be fair to our other customers who have chosen to support us through paying the full price.
We understand there are many economies around the world and people have dramatically different situations, but unfortunately there is no good way to vet if someone really deserves a discount more than someone else. Ultimately the only honorable solution is that we decide what we think our work is worth, which includes support and work on future updates, and we offer the same, fair price to everyone.
We put a considerable amount of effort into Spine over the years and continue to pour more into it every single day. I hope this is reflected in both the quality of the product and our top-notch customer service. Your support is what allows the Spine team to work on it full time and continue to innovate and improve Spine.
I highly suggest Spine Essential, which is very capable. The fancy meshes and other Spine Professional features are no doubt impressive, but those are really not the core of Spine. In fact, I often feel that Professional users get distracted by those features, often to the point where their animations suffer. At one extreme people are doing frame-by-frame spritesheets, and at the other there are meshes weighted to bones constrained to paths weighted to IK bones, etc. The first initial jump from frame-by-frame to Spine Essential is a huge one and IMO much more important than the jump from Essential to Professional.
I really like this article, which is all done without any Professional features:
http://esotericsoftware.com/files/Gamasutra-Carlos-Cavalcante-Tips-to-create-funny-and-juicy-character-animations-with-Spine-basics
Please note that you can purchase Spine Essential and upgrade to Spine Professional at any time for the difference in price. We also offer a money back guarantee for any reason within 30 days of purchasing.
