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What else is a mobile game dev supposed to do? Ask customers to sideload? Tell people to use f-droid? If they do that they're restricting themselves to a tiny f

What else is a mobile game dev supposed to do? Ask customers to sideload? Tell people to use f-droid? If they do that they're restricting themselves to a tiny fraction of the possible audience and thereby removing any chance they have of being profitable.

pdonis 5y ago
> What else is a mobile game dev supposed to do? Start a startup to make a mobile app store that out-competes Google. Somebody is going to have to do it sooner or later. Young devs with nothing to lose are the best people to try.
- anonymousab 5y ago
  > Start a startup [...] that out-competes Google You know, I don't think that "just be better than the trillion dollar incumbent" is a reasonable starting point for any healthy market.
  - pdonis 5y ago
    > I don't think that "just be better than the trillion dollar incumbent" is a reasonable starting point for any healthy market. I'm not proposing this solution because I think it's easy. I'm proposing it because I think it's the only one that has any chance of actually fixing the problem long term. Government fiat won't fix it; it will make it worse, the same way government fiat in general makes problems worse, not better.
    - jpe90 5y ago
      > the same way government fiat in general makes problems worse, not better. To be clear, you're saying that U.S. antitrust legislation left us worse off, historically?
      - wussboy 5y ago
        Or the ban against lead additives. Or against child labour. Or any one of hundreds of massive benefits that government fiat has brought us.
        pdonis 5y ago
        > Or the ban against lead additives. Or against child labour. Sometimes the government manages to mandate something that happens to be a good idea. But that does not mean that government mandates, overall, are a net benefit. > Or any one of hundreds of massive benefits that government fiat has brought us. If you really think there are "hundreds of massive benefits" brought to us by government fiat, I suggest a review of history. You will find many, many more cases of government fiat causing harm than of it doing good. In the extreme, government fiat killed hundreds of millions of people in the 20th century. If you want more local, individualized information, try asking anyone who has had to deal with a government bureaucracy when it makes a bad individual decision (which happens all the time) about their experience. (My wife and I have had this experience multiple times with multiple government bureaucracies.) You will get a very different viewpoint on the "benefits" of government fiat.
      - pdonis 5y ago
        > you're saying that U.S. antitrust legislation left us worse off, historically? Yes. For example, look up what happened to Standard Oil and Alcoa Aluminum. Both of those companies were providing their products with better quality and at lower prices than the companies that existed after they were broken up by antitrust suits.
    - AnthonyMouse 5y ago
      Government fiat generally makes problems worse because the government is a monopoly and a monopoly has little incentive to do things well because of a lack of consequences for getting it wrong, unlike a business in a competitive market which has to respond to competitive pressure or go bust. But a monopoly/cartel isn't a competitive market and has the exact same problem. And antitrust is minimally damaging as long as you restrict the targets to companies that have more than, say, 25% market share. In other words, as long as it places no constraints on upstarts and challengers. Because at that point, blindly causing harm to the large incumbents is actually good even if it's hamfisted and incompetent, because then the market can fix any damage by transitioning to smaller suppliers not subject to antitrust rules, which is the thing that actually solves the problem. The worst thing they can do is fail to do enough damage to the incumbents to restore competition, which is the same thing that happens if they do nothing.
      - pdonis 5y ago
        > Government fiat generally makes problems worse because the government is a monopoly That's one problem, yes, but not the only one. Good government is a public good, and elementary economics tells us that public goods are underproduced. Or, to put it another way, concentrated special interests have a larger incentive and more concentrated resources to corrupt government, than dispersed individuals have to keep it from being corrupted. Also, governments aren't quite monopolies as long as people have the right of exit--if you don't like your state's government, you can move to another state, and if you don't like your country's government, you can move to another country. Granted, the transaction costs for such moves are high (particularly for the latter), but many people still do it. That exerts at least some competitive pressure. > a monopoly/cartel isn't a competitive market It depends on why it's a monopoly. If it's a monopoly because of special privileges granted by the government (which most monopolies are and have been historically), then yes, it's not exposed to competitive pressure. But if it's a monopoly because it provides better quality and lower prices for its products than any competitors, then it is exposed to competitive pressure--and it's succeeding at dealing with it. That's not a monopoly; that's a win for the free market. The real problem with a company like Google is that its users are not its customers, so the whole idea of "competitive pressure" in the usual economic sense doesn't even apply. Google has no incentive to provide products that benefit its users, other than the fact that it needs a critical mass of users to be attractive to its actual customers (advertisers and other companies to which it sells data and access to users' eyeballs). What's more, since Google's users do not pay for its products and services, Google has no idea how valuable those products actually are to users, since it has cut off the best source of feedback--what users will pay for. > the market can fix any damage by transitioning to smaller suppliers not subject to antitrust rules, which is the thing that actually solves the problem That only solves the problem if the problem is that the smaller suppliers can provide better quality and lower prices to customers. But that's not even the problem with Google; see above. Google's actual customers don't want smaller suppliers, because Google's value to them is precisely its size. Breaking up Google without changing the basic business model would just create huge incentives for its customers to game the system, getting pretty much the same things they are getting now, but just with more maneuvering under the table. If the government is going to do something hamfisted at all, the obvious thing to do would be to outlaw the ad-supported business model altogether. Make Google, and Facebook, and every other such platform, charge users a fair price for the services they provide, and let users, in a free, competitive market, decide what services are worth their cost. But of course that would be politically insane, because the users themselves don't want to pay for those services; why should they, when they've been conditioned to have them for free for so long? Only weird outliers like me would actually applaud such a move; I'd be happy to pay Google some reasonable fee per month to use search and maps (which are the only Google apps I use) if in exchange my data was no longer sold to third parties. But it doesn't seem to me that most people would agree with that. Another suggestion I've seen is for the government to force Google, and Facebook, and every other such platform, to open up the APIs for all their services, so anyone could write their own client. That would enable clients to be written that didn't show ads and didn't do all the other tracking that Google's and Facebook's own clients do. But if Google and Facebook are still stuck on the ad-supported business model, again, that just creates huge incentives for them to game the system, creating new hidden back channels for their actual customers to get the data they need while pretending to have a free, open, public API that any client can use. Clients can only hide so much; at the end of the day they still have to make requests to the API, and those requests contain the basic data that the platforms are selling. > The worst thing they can do is fail to do enough damage to the incumbents to restore competition No, that's nowhere near the worst case. The worst case is something like locking down the entire Internet, so, for example, a site like this one can no longer even exist.
    - patmorgan23 5y ago
      Or MAYBE the solution is to enforce antitrust and pro competitive market laws.
      - 6510 5y ago
        Automated replies should not be a thing. Refusing to disclose the reason why someone gets banned should not be a thing. Imagine a land lord doing this?
- sircastor 5y ago
  Epic tried to get people to sideload Fortnite, and it was not successful. Epic is a billion dollar company. The right content is not the problem here.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- klyrs 5y ago
  Is this a risk that you're willing to take? A handful of kids can (and frequently do) make awesome indy games. But how do you expect them to scale out a competitive software distribution platform, and who's going to pay for the marketing necessary to drive adoption among both developers and users?
  - pdonis 5y ago
    > how do you expect them to scale How quickly does it have to scale? Google itself was a niche product for quite some time before it had to scale. I'm not proposing that someone try to displace Google all at once. Google took a long time to get to the position it's in now. It will take a long time for it to be displaced, if it is. But you have to start somewhere.
    - klyrs 5y ago
      So, I take your non-answer to indicate that this risky career move isn't advice you're willing to follow. Am I wrong?

pdonis 5y ago

> What else is a mobile game dev supposed to do? Start a startup to make a mobile app store that out-competes Google. Somebody is going to have to do it sooner or later. Young devs with nothing to lose are the best people to try.

anonymousab 5y ago
> Start a startup [...] that out-competes Google You know, I don't think that "just be better than the trillion dollar incumbent" is a reasonable starting point for any healthy market.
- pdonis 5y ago
  > I don't think that "just be better than the trillion dollar incumbent" is a reasonable starting point for any healthy market. I'm not proposing this solution because I think it's easy. I'm proposing it because I think it's the only one that has any chance of actually fixing the problem long term. Government fiat won't fix it; it will make it worse, the same way government fiat in general makes problems worse, not better.
  - jpe90 5y ago
    > the same way government fiat in general makes problems worse, not better. To be clear, you're saying that U.S. antitrust legislation left us worse off, historically?
    - wussboy 5y ago
      Or the ban against lead additives. Or against child labour. Or any one of hundreds of massive benefits that government fiat has brought us.
      - pdonis 5y ago
        > Or the ban against lead additives. Or against child labour. Sometimes the government manages to mandate something that happens to be a good idea. But that does not mean that government mandates, overall, are a net benefit. > Or any one of hundreds of massive benefits that government fiat has brought us. If you really think there are "hundreds of massive benefits" brought to us by government fiat, I suggest a review of history. You will find many, many more cases of government fiat causing harm than of it doing good. In the extreme, government fiat killed hundreds of millions of people in the 20th century. If you want more local, individualized information, try asking anyone who has had to deal with a government bureaucracy when it makes a bad individual decision (which happens all the time) about their experience. (My wife and I have had this experience multiple times with multiple government bureaucracies.) You will get a very different viewpoint on the "benefits" of government fiat.
    - pdonis 5y ago
      > you're saying that U.S. antitrust legislation left us worse off, historically? Yes. For example, look up what happened to Standard Oil and Alcoa Aluminum. Both of those companies were providing their products with better quality and at lower prices than the companies that existed after they were broken up by antitrust suits.
  - AnthonyMouse 5y ago
    Government fiat generally makes problems worse because the government is a monopoly and a monopoly has little incentive to do things well because of a lack of consequences for getting it wrong, unlike a business in a competitive market which has to respond to competitive pressure or go bust. But a monopoly/cartel isn't a competitive market and has the exact same problem. And antitrust is minimally damaging as long as you restrict the targets to companies that have more than, say, 25% market share. In other words, as long as it places no constraints on upstarts and challengers. Because at that point, blindly causing harm to the large incumbents is actually good even if it's hamfisted and incompetent, because then the market can fix any damage by transitioning to smaller suppliers not subject to antitrust rules, which is the thing that actually solves the problem. The worst thing they can do is fail to do enough damage to the incumbents to restore competition, which is the same thing that happens if they do nothing.
    - pdonis 5y ago
      > Government fiat generally makes problems worse because the government is a monopoly That's one problem, yes, but not the only one. Good government is a public good, and elementary economics tells us that public goods are underproduced. Or, to put it another way, concentrated special interests have a larger incentive and more concentrated resources to corrupt government, than dispersed individuals have to keep it from being corrupted. Also, governments aren't quite monopolies as long as people have the right of exit--if you don't like your state's government, you can move to another state, and if you don't like your country's government, you can move to another country. Granted, the transaction costs for such moves are high (particularly for the latter), but many people still do it. That exerts at least some competitive pressure. > a monopoly/cartel isn't a competitive market It depends on why it's a monopoly. If it's a monopoly because of special privileges granted by the government (which most monopolies are and have been historically), then yes, it's not exposed to competitive pressure. But if it's a monopoly because it provides better quality and lower prices for its products than any competitors, then it is exposed to competitive pressure--and it's succeeding at dealing with it. That's not a monopoly; that's a win for the free market. The real problem with a company like Google is that its users are not its customers, so the whole idea of "competitive pressure" in the usual economic sense doesn't even apply. Google has no incentive to provide products that benefit its users, other than the fact that it needs a critical mass of users to be attractive to its actual customers (advertisers and other companies to which it sells data and access to users' eyeballs). What's more, since Google's users do not pay for its products and services, Google has no idea how valuable those products actually are to users, since it has cut off the best source of feedback--what users will pay for. > the market can fix any damage by transitioning to smaller suppliers not subject to antitrust rules, which is the thing that actually solves the problem That only solves the problem if the problem is that the smaller suppliers can provide better quality and lower prices to customers. But that's not even the problem with Google; see above. Google's actual customers don't want smaller suppliers, because Google's value to them is precisely its size. Breaking up Google without changing the basic business model would just create huge incentives for its customers to game the system, getting pretty much the same things they are getting now, but just with more maneuvering under the table. If the government is going to do something hamfisted at all, the obvious thing to do would be to outlaw the ad-supported business model altogether. Make Google, and Facebook, and every other such platform, charge users a fair price for the services they provide, and let users, in a free, competitive market, decide what services are worth their cost. But of course that would be politically insane, because the users themselves don't want to pay for those services; why should they, when they've been conditioned to have them for free for so long? Only weird outliers like me would actually applaud such a move; I'd be happy to pay Google some reasonable fee per month to use search and maps (which are the only Google apps I use) if in exchange my data was no longer sold to third parties. But it doesn't seem to me that most people would agree with that. Another suggestion I've seen is for the government to force Google, and Facebook, and every other such platform, to open up the APIs for all their services, so anyone could write their own client. That would enable clients to be written that didn't show ads and didn't do all the other tracking that Google's and Facebook's own clients do. But if Google and Facebook are still stuck on the ad-supported business model, again, that just creates huge incentives for them to game the system, creating new hidden back channels for their actual customers to get the data they need while pretending to have a free, open, public API that any client can use. Clients can only hide so much; at the end of the day they still have to make requests to the API, and those requests contain the basic data that the platforms are selling. > The worst thing they can do is fail to do enough damage to the incumbents to restore competition No, that's nowhere near the worst case. The worst case is something like locking down the entire Internet, so, for example, a site like this one can no longer even exist.
  - patmorgan23 5y ago
    Or MAYBE the solution is to enforce antitrust and pro competitive market laws.
    - 6510 5y ago
      Automated replies should not be a thing. Refusing to disclose the reason why someone gets banned should not be a thing. Imagine a land lord doing this?
sircastor 5y ago
Epic tried to get people to sideload Fortnite, and it was not successful. Epic is a billion dollar company. The right content is not the problem here.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
klyrs 5y ago
Is this a risk that you're willing to take? A handful of kids can (and frequently do) make awesome indy games. But how do you expect them to scale out a competitive software distribution platform, and who's going to pay for the marketing necessary to drive adoption among both developers and users?
- pdonis 5y ago
  > how do you expect them to scale How quickly does it have to scale? Google itself was a niche product for quite some time before it had to scale. I'm not proposing that someone try to displace Google all at once. Google took a long time to get to the position it's in now. It will take a long time for it to be displaced, if it is. But you have to start somewhere.
  - klyrs 5y ago
    So, I take your non-answer to indicate that this risky career move isn't advice you're willing to follow. Am I wrong?