Okay, so I want to keep suggestion idea short, sweet and to the point. I mainly talk about themeforest, but this could also apply to other marketplaces.
Firstly, as with anything code based, code changes over time, and that’s especially true for templates: AngularJS, jQuery, CSS and of course, HTML (5.1 is due for release soon). As a result, the older the code is, perhaps the ‘worse’ it gets, maybe it doesn’t work in a browser with a large marketshare, which is problematic.
My idea for this is simple: decrease the price of the item over time.
Let’s take a template for example: Pleasure admin theme. Author hasn’t updated in almost a year. Yet the item says ‘weekly updates’ and Envato describes the item as receiving ‘future updates’.
After 1 year of no updates, why is the item still priced at $23? Clearly, after a year, the item is no longer worth $23, simply because newer templates with new code are worth more, since they are likely to be designed and developed for the current generation of browsers and technology vs those which are now a year old. Also, if the author chooses not to support their product, the item should decrease in price over time, until it gets to a ‘clearance’ level and eventually be removed (if it’s broken, for example)
Over time, item gets cheaper, and we all benefit. How? I am more willing to drop $5 on a year old theme over $23 where it may not work one browser update to the next.