6 ms·

All I know is that the new Scrabble app is riddled with bullshit and still too tied to Facebook. I haven’t played online since I deleted my Facebook account in

All I know is that the new Scrabble app is riddled with bullshit and still too tied to Facebook. I haven’t played online since I deleted my Facebook account in January. Why is it so hard to just make a plain app without ads or in-app purchases? I’d happily pay $10 but let me just play Scrabble.

codq 6y ago
WordFeud. I've been playing with friends and family for years. One-time purchase to remove ads, no shenanigans. https://wordfeud.com/ https://wordfeud.com/
me_me_me 6y ago
Because that's not how you make money. Thats how you make little money. In application micro transaction with one tap buy are making a killing. People will spend way more than $10 if they can get a hint for 50c or extra go etc. It is such an effective mechanism that full price triple A games are fully transitioning into that model. Its vile practice but its all about next quarter, right?
- JoeAltmaier 6y ago
  Strangling the market doesn't make money. Heavy-handed ad spamming is always a mistake. How much money do we imagine they get from this?
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - xnyan 6y ago
    Ad spam is not a mistake if you like making tons of money off people. words with friends is the worst offender and has been printing money for a long time.
  - rstupek 6y ago
    Somewhere in the neighborhood of $2 per thousand impressions so not a ton per person
    - entropicdrifter 6y ago
      They make money by using ads as a bludgeon to get you to pay to remove them periodically
      - rstupek 6y ago
        You'd be surprised how few users are going to pay to remove the ads (definitely less than 3% in my experience).
        jdeibele 6y ago
        I changed the DNS setting on my router to one that blocks ads. The game I play shows me "house ads" - ads that are built into the app for the publisher's other games and their Facebook page - instead of ads from whatever awful network they were on. Having ad with built-in timers and then the app having a timer itself drove me to installing a PiHole. But changing the router settings to DNS was better because that gave me two IP addresses to enter and I don't have to maintain it.
  - me_me_me 6y ago
    That like saying scam spammers clearly cannot make money, cuz nobody will fall for it. And yet the Nigerian prince is still around. Those things are around because they are working, fullstop. If it didn't work - did not make money - it would stop. Just because it has negative effect on you it doesn't mean its same for others.
- nonbirithm 6y ago
  I remember seeing casino or slot machine games being released in the era of the PS2 on consoles. You could play all you wanted until you got bored, with no limits. This kind of game would never be released again today. I'm convinced that the only reason there was no monetization in those games was because it was technically infeasible with no persistent online presence tied to a store account, and no way to get the user's attention outside of the confines of their house, connected to a television. I believe that if there had been some way of extracting more money from users even sooner than the smartphone had been invented, it would have been done. The smartphone was so revolutionary it opened up all of those new avenues, and the monetization models have even reached consoles now that it's been well established that the people that use smartphones will buy into them.
kevstev 6y ago
What has burned me the most is that I actually did pay about $10 way back when for Scrabble and thought I was good to go for the forseeable future. They eventually phased this app out though I believe under the guise of incompatibility with an Android update, and later renamed it "ZZZSCRABBLE Free." I have never felt so burned- this was clearly a "Heads you win, Tails I lose" situation. For online play, maybe I understand since there are costs involved in running the service, but why can't I just play the computer? I think this may have happened again because I see another version that I had installed called "zzSUNSET SCRABBLE." Its maddening, I can still play the Scrabble game that I have on CD ROM from 1997 in a VM, but can't play Scrabble in an ad-free environment on my phone in 2020.

codq 6y ago

WordFeud. I've been playing with friends and family for years. One-time purchase to remove ads, no shenanigans. https://wordfeud.com/ https://wordfeud.com/

me_me_me 6y ago

Because that's not how you make money. Thats how you make little money. In application micro transaction with one tap buy are making a killing. People will spend way more than $10 if they can get a hint for 50c or extra go etc. It is such an effective mechanism that full price triple A games are fully transitioning into that model. Its vile practice but its all about next quarter, right?

JoeAltmaier 6y ago
Strangling the market doesn't make money. Heavy-handed ad spamming is always a mistake. How much money do we imagine they get from this?
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- xnyan 6y ago
  Ad spam is not a mistake if you like making tons of money off people. words with friends is the worst offender and has been printing money for a long time.
- rstupek 6y ago
  Somewhere in the neighborhood of $2 per thousand impressions so not a ton per person
  - entropicdrifter 6y ago
    They make money by using ads as a bludgeon to get you to pay to remove them periodically
    - rstupek 6y ago
      You'd be surprised how few users are going to pay to remove the ads (definitely less than 3% in my experience).
      - jdeibele 6y ago
        I changed the DNS setting on my router to one that blocks ads. The game I play shows me "house ads" - ads that are built into the app for the publisher's other games and their Facebook page - instead of ads from whatever awful network they were on. Having ad with built-in timers and then the app having a timer itself drove me to installing a PiHole. But changing the router settings to DNS was better because that gave me two IP addresses to enter and I don't have to maintain it.
- me_me_me 6y ago
  That like saying scam spammers clearly cannot make money, cuz nobody will fall for it. And yet the Nigerian prince is still around. Those things are around because they are working, fullstop. If it didn't work - did not make money - it would stop. Just because it has negative effect on you it doesn't mean its same for others.
nonbirithm 6y ago
I remember seeing casino or slot machine games being released in the era of the PS2 on consoles. You could play all you wanted until you got bored, with no limits. This kind of game would never be released again today. I'm convinced that the only reason there was no monetization in those games was because it was technically infeasible with no persistent online presence tied to a store account, and no way to get the user's attention outside of the confines of their house, connected to a television. I believe that if there had been some way of extracting more money from users even sooner than the smartphone had been invented, it would have been done. The smartphone was so revolutionary it opened up all of those new avenues, and the monetization models have even reached consoles now that it's been well established that the people that use smartphones will buy into them.

kevstev 6y ago

What has burned me the most is that I actually did pay about $10 way back when for Scrabble and thought I was good to go for the forseeable future. They eventually phased this app out though I believe under the guise of incompatibility with an Android update, and later renamed it "ZZZSCRABBLE Free." I have never felt so burned- this was clearly a "Heads you win, Tails I lose" situation. For online play, maybe I understand since there are costs involved in running the service, but why can't I just play the computer? I think this may have happened again because I see another version that I had installed called "zzSUNSET SCRABBLE." Its maddening, I can still play the Scrabble game that I have on CD ROM from 1997 in a VM, but can't play Scrabble in an ad-free environment on my phone in 2020.