12 ms·

Rovio delists original Angry Birds from PlayStore because it's still too popular

193 points by xvinci 4y ago

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
gjsman-1000 4y ago
Well... no surprise. It's the classic version, and you can buy it for $0.99 and have all the content, all the powerups, and none of the ads. Too good a deal for 2023.
- troupe 4y ago
  If a gas station finds they can't sell gas at $2 per gallon, they could rip out the gas tanks and stop selling gas or they could raise the price to whatever is profitable. I'm not understanding the business logic of removing the game.
  - scarface74 4y ago
    Applications on the App Store need continuous maintenance and updates.
    - troupe 4y ago
      I realize that, but it seems that a wildly successful older game would probably be able to amortize that cost over quite a few people still buying it at $3, $5, or $10.
      - scarface74 4y ago
        It’s hard to get people to pay for anything anymore. For instance, Soul Caliber was ported to iOS and it costs $10. I think I might have been one of the few people who bought it. It seems like the only way that you can make non scammy games make sense is via subscriptions like with Apple Arcade and even then it’s probably a loss leader for Apple and they subsidize game makers. This is partially the fault of the App Store model that doesn’t allow upgrade pricing.
  - cld8483 4y ago
    It's not a simple matter of the organization making the most rational decision for the interests of the organization. Individuals throughout the organization have an incentive to suppress past products to make newer products, and by extension themselves and their own careers, look better in comparison. Organizations can behave irrationally when the constituent members of the organization have incentives that puts them at odds with the rational interests of the organization itself.
  - mcherm 4y ago
    What if a gas station finds that people keep fueling up and then driving off -- the customers don't seem to want to plaster their cars with bumper stickers related to the advertisers who are paying extra to the gas station and they don't seem to want to use the fuel "filter" that requires you to put a small extra charge on your credit card every few miles or the fuel won't move from the tank to the engine? For the sake of profitability, I could imagine the gas station might choose to stop selling gas through pumps since those simply couldn't be as profitable.
    - troupe 4y ago
      > What if a gas station finds that people keep fueling up and then driving off I'd assume the price of gas would go up once they found it wasn't being subsidized by other sales.
  - fhd2 4y ago
    Yeah, sounds like they could have just raised the price of the original. But I guess they are convinced that this would still cannibalise their other offerings, which I suppose monetise better. So it's more like you having two gas stations next to each other - one with a price per gallon and nothing else, one with a more confusing user experience that yields more dollars per gallon of fuel than a fixed price.
    - gambiting 4y ago
      The thing with mobile games is that you make 90% of your money on 0.001% of your players - the big spenders. It's "better" to have a free game where a wealthy player can spend $10k on gems or whatever, than a one-time paid game. It's a sad state of the market, but that's how the big companies make money.
      - thriftwy 4y ago
        They may still keep both. The bug spenders will not play the original one - it becomes challenging at some point and does not have gems.
        gambiting 4y ago
        Yes, but if the original non-monetized version is result number 1 or 2 when searching for "angry birds" in the store, then the big spenders might never come across the version you want them to come across. You can't "fix" that by just increasing the price of the original game.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - tadfisher 4y ago
    The owner of the gas station also sells crack cocaine on the side. The longer people stay to fill up their vehicle, the more likely it is they'll purchase some crack cocaine. Right now, most of their clientele fill up without leaving their car, but the ones with electric cars will stay for up to an hour. So, considering both the refueling business and the crack cocaine business, the best move is to rip up the gas pumps and install more electric vehicle chargers.
    - humanizersequel 4y ago
      You don't even need the sensationalist reference to crack — this is already plausible with gas stations being convenience stores (and sometimes much more).
      - JohnFen 4y ago
        Indeed. Modern gas stations make very little money selling gas. They make money by people buying the stuff in their store.
        troupe 4y ago
        I don't think many intentionally lose money on gas though. If they weren't covering the cost of the gas, they would raise the price, which seems like a rational thing to do for a popular game.
        JohnFen 4y ago
        Quite a few do intentionally lose money on the gas itself, but it depends on the circumstances for the particular station. They consider the gas a loss leader. People are very price-conscious when it comes to gas and will drive far out out of their way to save a couple of pennies. Very few gas stations can afford to price their gas higher than other gas stations, and there is very often a price war going on between stations. But even the ones who don't lose money are nearly always only breaking even on the gas. It's a lot like how movies theaters make basically nothing from the ticket sales for the movie. They make their money at the concession stand.
- gambiting 4y ago
  Tbf, it's not the original version - it's specifically the "Rovio Classic: Angry Birds" which is a remake of the original, using their newer engine - and yes, it has ads already integrated. The original version(released 2009!) has been delisted long long time ago.
gitfan86 4y ago
This explains the current unemployment rate in the US. When given the choice between working several hours at a job you don't like to pay for entertainment verses using a free option for entertainment that is just as good if not better, many people are choosing the former.
- tekla 4y ago
  Did you just extrapolate a low unemployment rate from the actions of a developer of a old free mobile game?
  - gitfan86 4y ago
    No, I already understood the today's labor market and modern consumerism. I'm just showing a way it plays out in the real world. Here is another example: If you asked 100 random 20 year olds in 1985 what "success" looks like. There is a high likelihood some would mention large house, BMW, pool in the back yard, large TV, executive at a large company. If you did the same thing today you are much less likely to get that answer. Today you are much more likely to get millions of subscribers on YouTube or Instagram and no need for a full time job.
    - ouid 4y ago
      ah yes, becoming a part of the administrative capture, the most American of dreams.
    - falcolas 4y ago
      People wanted to be entertainment idols in the 80's too. They just called them movie stars. YouTube and Instagram are just different media services, and at the "millions of followers" levels they do pay enough that you don't have to hold a traditional job.
    - JohnFen 4y ago
      > If you did the same thing today you are much less likely to get that answer If that's true, that sounds like progress to me.
jabroni_salad 4y ago
Surely this is a marketing stunt and it will be back to normal in 3 days with an oopsie apology.
- minimaxir 4y ago
  "All publicity is good publicity" is a dated myth.
ChoGGi 4y ago
I don't know who Buck is in in relation to company position, but that's a lovely response :)
taubek 4y ago
None of the sequels were good as the first version.
thriftwy 4y ago
The "New" angry birds are barely playable and even the "Angry Birds Classic" seem to be much worse than the ones I had on my N900 a decade ago. But the new ones are just a piece of crap where the actual gameplay occupies the 5% of overall UI and the level design is boring as hell (levels look like somebody vomited them on the screen). It is basically how they put their child on altar and sacrificed it to Mammon. I wanted my small children to get the Angry Birds experience but my youth memories were violated.
- mouse_ 4y ago
  I hear you. My suggestion is to find an old Kindle Fire HDX 7". It's a 7" Android 4.2.2 with great performance; you can get APKs of all your old favorite games from nearly shady sources and play them as they were in their glory days, before everything started breaking. Mobile gaming was once something great.
petepete 4y ago
It's almost as if when given the choice people prefer games without microtransactions, even if they're older and have fewer features/powerups etc.
- thriftwy 4y ago
  I would be just happy to pay for new, interesting and challenging, levels for Angry Birds "the thing" 1.0. But, when the gameplay is so absurdly easy you can beat everything with one finger, all the levels are pointless, and most of screen real estate is dedicated to selling you gems or ability to resume playing level after losing it, it just does not make any sense. You have to seriously be mentally retarded to play it.
  - gjsman-1000 4y ago
    I was really upset with Angry Birds 2 introducing a degree of randomness into the levels. Level 6 might appear different for you, just a little bit, every time you load it. Just like that, any appearance of craft that went into the levels was shredded and they just feel AI-generated rather than a natural progression. In which case, because AI-generation is basically infinite, do I really care to beat all the levels? (Angry Birds 1 was a big game - 700 levels. Angry Birds 2? 3,080! But it still feels like they could just increase an integer in the code somewhere and get another 1,000.) I remember playing Angry Birds with friends (not AB Friends) back in ~2012. It was so great when you knew or had figured out the best solution to a level and your friends didn't know how, or vice versa. Also, old Angry Birds was like 10 chapters of ~45 levels each, so if you were stuck in one chapter, you worked on another (and could maybe have the solution for one chapter while your buddy had another), rather than a straight-through "oh, I don't remember how to beat level 308." Randomized levels and the straight-through progression shreds that.
    - artificial 4y ago
      Storing a seed would fix this. Procedural generation was something that made replay great for games like Diablo.
  - 4y ago
cld8483 4y ago
They can't compete with what they once were, so they bury the past. I suspect many industries are like this. If classic movies were played alongside new Hollywood releases, the new movies would probably be choked out. Accordingly, Disney will even restrict the availability of their old movies on DVD. They can't stand competing with their former great selves.
- zadler 4y ago
  Yea. Google actively forgets everything in order to encourage new content and paying customers. Not to mention, many products hit their peak of usability, and then the publishers go ahead and make it a little worse each year just so some product person can look like they did something.
- blockwriter 4y ago
  With movies, I find it to be the opposite. I might recognize the old movies as better in many ways, but their pacing is excruciatingly slow compared to modern movies. It takes a layer of appreciation to get through many of them.
  - acdha 4y ago
    There is definitely an element of conditioning here. People have grown accustomed to frenetic action and the studios like it because it’s easier than hiring good writers – especially since they’re hoping for global sales and humor, subtly, and nuance are hard to translate – but that’s a learned preference based on what dominates the market. If different things came back on the market people would get used to them, too.
    - SketchySeaBeast 4y ago
      Older movies are full of filler too, but it's generally less exciting filler - looooong shots of a car driving through the countryside or plot beats that could be 1 minute stretching to 10 without having any reason to be as long as they are. Over time movies have learned to cut a lot of fat.
scarface74 4y ago
I saw the same thing happen with Tetris. It was first released when the App Store came out. It was 99 cents and no ads. It kept working and being available through the 32 bit era. But was never updated for larger screens and was replaced with an ad ridden version. Plants vs Zombies 2 was also much worse than the original because of ads and in app purchases. That being said, they did “bring back” Angry Birds Classic to iOS as a one time 99 cents purchase.
mindvirus 4y ago
Refreshingly honest reasoning, at least.
jgilias 4y ago
Thanks! Just bought it.
stephc_int13 4y ago
The AppStore pricing system and later the quick domination of the "free to play" model initiated at the same time a gold rush and a race to the bottom that has been immensely profitable for a few lucky companies that understood the trend early enough and/or had the cash to sustain large campaigns of so-called "customer acquisition". I think the net effect has overall been detrimental for users and companies alike. 99p games should never have existed in the first place.
flenserboy 4y ago
A wedge for developers looking to boost Linux: make small, quality games that distribution makers can be convinced to include. MicroSoft did this with Minesweeper and Solitaire, and far more people than you might think demanded Windows not because it could do the tasks they wanted, but because it had the simple recreations they desired and had grown used to. The best way to crowd out the ad-laden and micro-transaction app models is to make small, very well-made, free games the norm. There are some of these games available for Linux, but most lack the polish and discoverability that are necessary to get attention and help bring people over.
- WaffleIronMaker 4y ago
  I think the gaming market has changed significantly since Minesweeper and Solitaire were popular. Sure, it can be a nice quality of life boost to include some small games, but I don't think it would be a major draw to Linux. I believe the internet and mobile devices have largely filled this niche. Ensuring existing AAA games run solidly on Linux, like Valve is working towards with Proton, seems to have a much greater impact.
  - robertlagrant 4y ago
    I agree entirely. Valve is taking the long, but correct, way round for this. I have a Linux computer with a GPU I game on, and I use Valve's compatibility layer for most of them.
- throwaway744678 4y ago
  Even more true for Nokia: people bought Nokia phones (3210, 3310, etc.) because of Snake!
- mananaysiempre 4y ago
  IIRC the official history says Minesweeper and Solitaire were both included as user-education devices—Minesweeper for teaching left- vs right-clicking and Solitaire for some other thing (drag&drop?). Not sure if the official history is true (wasn’t Freecell distributed as a Win32s test app?). Also, if anything I’d say the old, write-your-Xorg.conf-by-hand Linux desktop included more of these than the modern glossy one: Chromium B.S.U., Tux Racer, GNOME Robots (still in gnome-games I think), there were a ton of those. As well as xneko, xeyes and so on. Whereas on Windows you needed to look on computer magazine CDs and such to find the equivalent.
yieldcrv 4y ago
A decade ago mobile app gaming showed promise, no real hits but the medium showing that it has legs A decade later it is worse than anyone imagined, no real hits just a couple games from that earlier era because they’re the only ones you can play offline at all if I'm missing some gems let me know!
- dokem 4y ago
  Also mobile web. Mobile web is 100% broken as far as i'm concerned.
- YurgenJurgensen 4y ago
  I remember back when iPhone was just starting to take off, and a lot of the wide-eyed techno-futurists generally had some pithy retort to fans of the latest AAA console game of the form 'You can have your $40 console game, and I'll buy 40 $1 games and we'll see who has more fun'. Well, now the console games cost $70, but the mobile games are 'free'. In this case, 'free' evaluates to somewhere between $100,000 and $'Your Soul'.
lambic2 4y ago
I don't understand, is it because they do not want to change its monetization to ads and IAP's? How is having this game in the App Store making them lose money?
narrator 4y ago
It's not like there aren't a lot of other games to play out there. The market for mobile entertainment is about as competitive as any.
codepoet80 4y ago
If you've got an old HP Touchpad or Palm Pre handy, you can still get the original -- free of telemetry and micro-transactions: https://appcatalog.webosarchive.org/app/AngryBirds https://appcatalog.webosarchive.org/app/AngryBirds
- aidenscott2016 4y ago
  My first experience of Angry Bird was on a Palm Pixi. It was challenging.
hedora 4y ago
We need copyright reform for cases like this. In particular, copyright infringement damages should be capped at a small multiple of lost sales. That way, when a copyrighted work goes of market (or is no longer sold at a reasonable mass-market rate), there would be no penalty for redistributing it. (Derivative works might need to be handled differently, since the above effectively invalidates the GPL, though not Apache or BSD)
- gspencley 4y ago
  I have a nuanced take on this. Say, hypothetically, that I am the creator of a song, book, video game or whatever. One day, for purely selfish reasons that I don't need others to understand, I decide that I no longer want to offer my creation to others. Do I forfeit any and all rights over something that I personally produced; that I invented, designed, fabricated and brought into existence; just because I once offered it to others? I know that the law takes a more social look at the issue. After a while creative works enter the public domain and copyright is no longer recognized. The timeline varies and has been extended. I think right now it is the life of the author plus 75 years or something like that because of copyrights held by corporations rather than individuals. I don't know what the "right" length of time is. And for classics that have outlived the life of the creator and are "culturally significant" there is a broader discussion to be had. Beyond that scenario, the principal that I come at this from is that I, as a creator, rightfully recognize and defend my own rights to the things that I pour a significant portion of myself and life into. I made it, it's mine and therefore others can GTFO even if they disagree with me. Bill Waterson, of Calvin & Hobbes fame, had a similar view. In rare interviews he stated that the only audience he ever cared about was his wife. If he could make her laugh with the comics, that was all that mattered. Since retiring the comic he has held on to those rights very tightly. He has allowed a few reprints but otherwise does not license out the property much at all. He doesn't want any more Calvin & Hobbes works to be created. Agree or disagree, I recognize that as his right as the creator. You or I did not create Calvin & Hobbes, he did. It's his.
  - no_time 4y ago
    > Do I forfeit any and all rights over something that I personally produced; that I invented, designed, fabricated and brought into existence; just because I once offered it to others? Nothing wrong with choosing not to engage in business. The problem arises when you want to stop people with the force of the government who want to plug the hole you've created.
beardog 4y ago
Huh, I would think ads and all the merchandise they sell would be enough.
mikejarema 4y ago
The announcement says it'll be renamed to "Red's First Flight" and be re-listed "pending further review". I wonder if this is simply a rebranding so that the original no longer appears for "Angry Birds" searches in the app store. Namely that subsequent versions make more $ per install, and having the original at a low price point is cannibalizing sales of the newer more profitable titles.
- xd1936 4y ago
  Then why only do that on iOS, and completely remove it from Android? The Play Store also supports renaming listings...
  - JumpCrisscross 4y ago
    > why only do that on iOS Higher-margin market, which means hope for up-selling.
  - altairprime 4y ago
    Think “scummy anti-SEO practices”. It’s so that when people search their Purchased Apps index for Angry Birds, having not recently installed it, the older flat-price no-IAP version isn’t shown in the results, and they’ll be more likely to install an IAP version instead. (iOS lets you install apps you’ve installed previously, even if they’re delisted.)
cloudking 4y ago
That's a shame, one of the first great UX for mobile games. Nothing until that release quite matched the feeling of pulling a slingshot.
- dokem 4y ago
  Until I read your comment I was thinking about Flappy Bird, not Angry Birds. All the comments still made sense though.
  - cloudking 4y ago
    Clearly the answer is Rovio should acquire and make Angry Flappy Birds.
  - xeromal 4y ago
    Pretty sure the creator of flappy bird contemplated suicide or something like that so he removed it pretty early on.
rkangel 4y ago
If it's "too popular" why would you not just increase the price to like $10? It shouldn't which way you make money, as long as you make money.
- dagw 4y ago
  If you removed it and then re-list essentially the same game under a different name first then all the people who already own it will have to re-buy it next time they update their phone. If you just raise the price then those people who already bought it will get to keep playing for free, and that's just leaving money on the table.
  - qrck13 4y ago
    If you just remove the listing, accounts who already own the game can still download the last published apk at any time - it can be found in "my apps". Even in case of free apps. In theory company can cripple the old version deliberately, but that would likely be against play store rules
stewx 4y ago
Anyone remember Tap Tap Revenge? Another game that was delisted a long time ago after a period of great popularity (15 million downloads in that game series, per Wikipedia).
- protonbob 4y ago
  That was my favorite mobile game of all time.
- AlexandrB 4y ago
  That was a great game and actually introduced me to several great songs. I always suspected one of the reasons they pulled it because they lost the license to the music in the game or would have to pay ongoing costs to maintain the license.
yamtaddle 4y ago
Still on the Apple App Store? I was so happy to find it on there a while back. Was surprised it was so cheap, though—I barely game at all on my phone, but would have paid quite a bit more than what they were charging for that game. Guess there's little hope of their re-releasing Seasons, then? That's the only other one I'd pay money for (or, indeed, even play for free).
gravitronic 4y ago
Just the end of the new software lifecycle: company revokes access and it disappears forever.
Kukumber 4y ago
Off-topic: What a poor way to make an announcement - low resolution image - red flashy background full of noise - blurry text My eyes are still burning
no_time 4y ago
With the magic of btdig.com you too can find all of their releases for PC and android alike. https://i.imgur.com/EcJugS8.png https://i.imgur.com/EcJugS8.png Another loss for paying customers, another win for pirates.
rchaud 4y ago
The mobile gaming landscape could have been completely different if Rovio charged a flat $10 for Angry Birds all those years ago. I'm sure they've made significantly more money by going freemium with ads, but in doing so they also poisoned the well of mobile gaming. Everything now is Pay to Win. Despite there being genuinely impressive games on mobile (Asphalt racing for one), the mechanics of how the game actually works makes me not want to play it.
- justeleblanc 4y ago
  It's not one company's decision ten years ago that shaped that whole behemoth of a market.
  - philistine 4y ago
    It is. It's just that the culprit is Apple. No demos, IAPs for free games, 70% cut on all transactions, those are the actions that shaped the overwhelming part of the mobile market into a casino-in-everything--but-name.
    - AlexandrB 4y ago
      > casino-in-everything--but-name Still hoping that games with "surprise mechanics"[1] get legislated into the 18+ bucket one day. That would not only keep many kids from blowing their parents' credit cards on gems but make this business model less attractive by shrinking the market. [1] https://www.ign.com/articles/2019/06/20/ea-defends-loot-boxes-calls-them-surprise-mechanics https://www.ign.com/articles/2019/06/20/ea-defends-loot-boxe...
  - rchaud 4y ago
    They were the first hit game on iOS, they set the standard for monetization strategy in the then-nascent app store world.
- kachurovskiy 4y ago
  I'm willing to bet that the wast majority of Angry Bird users (including myself) didn't have a payment method on file at the time of install, much less would agree to spend $10 on it.
causi 4y ago
What kind of dumpster-fire developer gets out-competed by a game they released fourteen years ago targeted at a platform with a 320x480 screen and 128MB of RAM?
- insane_dreamer 4y ago
  ads and pay-to-play
jdlyga 4y ago
I lost faith in Rovio when they started advertising fake game footage on TikTok. They're just a clickbait company now.
- JohnFen 4y ago
  I was disgusted by them when they came down hard on people making games similar in style to Angry Birds -- because Angry Birds itself is a ripoff of another game.
forevergreenyon 4y ago
future online tutorial: "How to 'write' your first "hello world!" program" step 1: find the "hello word!" app in the store step 2: buy it step 3: done! you're now 'programming' your device!!!
hbn 4y ago
The mobile games industry is such a mess and it worries me that kids are only being exposed to video games that are 80% watching ads and begging for microtransactions. If this is the standard, they may never expect more. On the other hand, I find solace that we still have games like Elden Ring coming out that are a one-time purchase, finely crafted experience that manage to sell like gangbusters.
cptcobalt 4y ago
I don't disagree with everyone's reactions of "they're probably making a bad game if their original with the least microtransactions is the most popular"—but there's also one key point I don't see being elevated enough: archival. It's relatively silly that when they pull these games, there's very little way to get them back—see flappy bird, for instance. With classic game consoles, you still have the install/play media like discs and cartridges. With digital downloads, you don't—and if you do, you still need some sort of code or receipt signing to play, even if you have the binary. That's not great—we're going to have games lost to time. Sure, maybe not Angry Birds for its cultural influence, but others? Definitely.
Karliss 4y ago
Interesting fact. The version they unlisted is not only remake of original one, it's their latest (or at least one of the latest) released Angry Bird games. It was released in 2022. The other games they want you to play instead are technically older. When making this remake they could have included whatever modern monetization schemes they wanted (as long as it doesn't require too much changes to gameplay itself). Actual original one was removed in 2019. Removing their latest(remake) because it's too popular, make the whole thing more funny than removing actual original version which would be ~14 years old at this point.
reiichiroh 4y ago
It’s PopCap situation all over again after EA
perryizgr8 4y ago
I must say I am astonished at the current state of mobile "gaming". All this talent and money and I still got more enjoyment and gameplay out of free newgrounds flash games developed by a single man in his spare time.

193 points by xvinci 4y ago

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

Well... no surprise. It's the classic version, and you can buy it for $0.99 and have all the content, all the powerups, and none of the ads. Too good a deal for 2023.

troupe 4y ago
If a gas station finds they can't sell gas at $2 per gallon, they could rip out the gas tanks and stop selling gas or they could raise the price to whatever is profitable. I'm not understanding the business logic of removing the game.
- scarface74 4y ago
  Applications on the App Store need continuous maintenance and updates.
  - troupe 4y ago
    I realize that, but it seems that a wildly successful older game would probably be able to amortize that cost over quite a few people still buying it at $3, $5, or $10.
    - scarface74 4y ago
      It’s hard to get people to pay for anything anymore. For instance, Soul Caliber was ported to iOS and it costs $10. I think I might have been one of the few people who bought it. It seems like the only way that you can make non scammy games make sense is via subscriptions like with Apple Arcade and even then it’s probably a loss leader for Apple and they subsidize game makers. This is partially the fault of the App Store model that doesn’t allow upgrade pricing.
- cld8483 4y ago
  It's not a simple matter of the organization making the most rational decision for the interests of the organization. Individuals throughout the organization have an incentive to suppress past products to make newer products, and by extension themselves and their own careers, look better in comparison. Organizations can behave irrationally when the constituent members of the organization have incentives that puts them at odds with the rational interests of the organization itself.
- mcherm 4y ago
  What if a gas station finds that people keep fueling up and then driving off -- the customers don't seem to want to plaster their cars with bumper stickers related to the advertisers who are paying extra to the gas station and they don't seem to want to use the fuel "filter" that requires you to put a small extra charge on your credit card every few miles or the fuel won't move from the tank to the engine? For the sake of profitability, I could imagine the gas station might choose to stop selling gas through pumps since those simply couldn't be as profitable.
  - troupe 4y ago
    > What if a gas station finds that people keep fueling up and then driving off I'd assume the price of gas would go up once they found it wasn't being subsidized by other sales.
- fhd2 4y ago
  Yeah, sounds like they could have just raised the price of the original. But I guess they are convinced that this would still cannibalise their other offerings, which I suppose monetise better. So it's more like you having two gas stations next to each other - one with a price per gallon and nothing else, one with a more confusing user experience that yields more dollars per gallon of fuel than a fixed price.
  - gambiting 4y ago
    The thing with mobile games is that you make 90% of your money on 0.001% of your players - the big spenders. It's "better" to have a free game where a wealthy player can spend $10k on gems or whatever, than a one-time paid game. It's a sad state of the market, but that's how the big companies make money.
    - thriftwy 4y ago
      They may still keep both. The bug spenders will not play the original one - it becomes challenging at some point and does not have gems.
      - gambiting 4y ago
        Yes, but if the original non-monetized version is result number 1 or 2 when searching for "angry birds" in the store, then the big spenders might never come across the version you want them to come across. You can't "fix" that by just increasing the price of the original game.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- tadfisher 4y ago
  The owner of the gas station also sells crack cocaine on the side. The longer people stay to fill up their vehicle, the more likely it is they'll purchase some crack cocaine. Right now, most of their clientele fill up without leaving their car, but the ones with electric cars will stay for up to an hour. So, considering both the refueling business and the crack cocaine business, the best move is to rip up the gas pumps and install more electric vehicle chargers.
  - humanizersequel 4y ago
    You don't even need the sensationalist reference to crack — this is already plausible with gas stations being convenience stores (and sometimes much more).
    - JohnFen 4y ago
      Indeed. Modern gas stations make very little money selling gas. They make money by people buying the stuff in their store.
      - troupe 4y ago
        I don't think many intentionally lose money on gas though. If they weren't covering the cost of the gas, they would raise the price, which seems like a rational thing to do for a popular game.
        JohnFen 4y ago
        Quite a few do intentionally lose money on the gas itself, but it depends on the circumstances for the particular station. They consider the gas a loss leader. People are very price-conscious when it comes to gas and will drive far out out of their way to save a couple of pennies. Very few gas stations can afford to price their gas higher than other gas stations, and there is very often a price war going on between stations. But even the ones who don't lose money are nearly always only breaking even on the gas. It's a lot like how movies theaters make basically nothing from the ticket sales for the movie. They make their money at the concession stand.
gambiting 4y ago
Tbf, it's not the original version - it's specifically the "Rovio Classic: Angry Birds" which is a remake of the original, using their newer engine - and yes, it has ads already integrated. The original version(released 2009!) has been delisted long long time ago.

gitfan86 4y ago

This explains the current unemployment rate in the US. When given the choice between working several hours at a job you don't like to pay for entertainment verses using a free option for entertainment that is just as good if not better, many people are choosing the former.

tekla 4y ago
Did you just extrapolate a low unemployment rate from the actions of a developer of a old free mobile game?
- gitfan86 4y ago
  No, I already understood the today's labor market and modern consumerism. I'm just showing a way it plays out in the real world. Here is another example: If you asked 100 random 20 year olds in 1985 what "success" looks like. There is a high likelihood some would mention large house, BMW, pool in the back yard, large TV, executive at a large company. If you did the same thing today you are much less likely to get that answer. Today you are much more likely to get millions of subscribers on YouTube or Instagram and no need for a full time job.
  - ouid 4y ago
    ah yes, becoming a part of the administrative capture, the most American of dreams.
  - falcolas 4y ago
    People wanted to be entertainment idols in the 80's too. They just called them movie stars. YouTube and Instagram are just different media services, and at the "millions of followers" levels they do pay enough that you don't have to hold a traditional job.
  - JohnFen 4y ago
    > If you did the same thing today you are much less likely to get that answer If that's true, that sounds like progress to me.

jabroni_salad 4y ago

Surely this is a marketing stunt and it will be back to normal in 3 days with an oopsie apology.

minimaxir 4y ago
"All publicity is good publicity" is a dated myth.

ChoGGi 4y ago

I don't know who Buck is in in relation to company position, but that's a lovely response :)

taubek 4y ago

None of the sequels were good as the first version.

thriftwy 4y ago

The "New" angry birds are barely playable and even the "Angry Birds Classic" seem to be much worse than the ones I had on my N900 a decade ago. But the new ones are just a piece of crap where the actual gameplay occupies the 5% of overall UI and the level design is boring as hell (levels look like somebody vomited them on the screen). It is basically how they put their child on altar and sacrificed it to Mammon. I wanted my small children to get the Angry Birds experience but my youth memories were violated.

mouse_ 4y ago
I hear you. My suggestion is to find an old Kindle Fire HDX 7". It's a 7" Android 4.2.2 with great performance; you can get APKs of all your old favorite games from nearly shady sources and play them as they were in their glory days, before everything started breaking. Mobile gaming was once something great.

petepete 4y ago

It's almost as if when given the choice people prefer games without microtransactions, even if they're older and have fewer features/powerups etc.

thriftwy 4y ago
I would be just happy to pay for new, interesting and challenging, levels for Angry Birds "the thing" 1.0. But, when the gameplay is so absurdly easy you can beat everything with one finger, all the levels are pointless, and most of screen real estate is dedicated to selling you gems or ability to resume playing level after losing it, it just does not make any sense. You have to seriously be mentally retarded to play it.
- gjsman-1000 4y ago
  I was really upset with Angry Birds 2 introducing a degree of randomness into the levels. Level 6 might appear different for you, just a little bit, every time you load it. Just like that, any appearance of craft that went into the levels was shredded and they just feel AI-generated rather than a natural progression. In which case, because AI-generation is basically infinite, do I really care to beat all the levels? (Angry Birds 1 was a big game - 700 levels. Angry Birds 2? 3,080! But it still feels like they could just increase an integer in the code somewhere and get another 1,000.) I remember playing Angry Birds with friends (not AB Friends) back in ~2012. It was so great when you knew or had figured out the best solution to a level and your friends didn't know how, or vice versa. Also, old Angry Birds was like 10 chapters of ~45 levels each, so if you were stuck in one chapter, you worked on another (and could maybe have the solution for one chapter while your buddy had another), rather than a straight-through "oh, I don't remember how to beat level 308." Randomized levels and the straight-through progression shreds that.
  - artificial 4y ago
    Storing a seed would fix this. Procedural generation was something that made replay great for games like Diablo.
- 4y ago

cld8483 4y ago

They can't compete with what they once were, so they bury the past. I suspect many industries are like this. If classic movies were played alongside new Hollywood releases, the new movies would probably be choked out. Accordingly, Disney will even restrict the availability of their old movies on DVD. They can't stand competing with their former great selves.

zadler 4y ago
Yea. Google actively forgets everything in order to encourage new content and paying customers. Not to mention, many products hit their peak of usability, and then the publishers go ahead and make it a little worse each year just so some product person can look like they did something.
blockwriter 4y ago
With movies, I find it to be the opposite. I might recognize the old movies as better in many ways, but their pacing is excruciatingly slow compared to modern movies. It takes a layer of appreciation to get through many of them.
- acdha 4y ago
  There is definitely an element of conditioning here. People have grown accustomed to frenetic action and the studios like it because it’s easier than hiring good writers – especially since they’re hoping for global sales and humor, subtly, and nuance are hard to translate – but that’s a learned preference based on what dominates the market. If different things came back on the market people would get used to them, too.
  - SketchySeaBeast 4y ago
    Older movies are full of filler too, but it's generally less exciting filler - looooong shots of a car driving through the countryside or plot beats that could be 1 minute stretching to 10 without having any reason to be as long as they are. Over time movies have learned to cut a lot of fat.

scarface74 4y ago

I saw the same thing happen with Tetris. It was first released when the App Store came out. It was 99 cents and no ads. It kept working and being available through the 32 bit era. But was never updated for larger screens and was replaced with an ad ridden version. Plants vs Zombies 2 was also much worse than the original because of ads and in app purchases. That being said, they did “bring back” Angry Birds Classic to iOS as a one time 99 cents purchase.

mindvirus 4y ago

Refreshingly honest reasoning, at least.

jgilias 4y ago

Thanks! Just bought it.

stephc_int13 4y ago

The AppStore pricing system and later the quick domination of the "free to play" model initiated at the same time a gold rush and a race to the bottom that has been immensely profitable for a few lucky companies that understood the trend early enough and/or had the cash to sustain large campaigns of so-called "customer acquisition". I think the net effect has overall been detrimental for users and companies alike. 99p games should never have existed in the first place.

flenserboy 4y ago

A wedge for developers looking to boost Linux: make small, quality games that distribution makers can be convinced to include. MicroSoft did this with Minesweeper and Solitaire, and far more people than you might think demanded Windows not because it could do the tasks they wanted, but because it had the simple recreations they desired and had grown used to. The best way to crowd out the ad-laden and micro-transaction app models is to make small, very well-made, free games the norm. There are some of these games available for Linux, but most lack the polish and discoverability that are necessary to get attention and help bring people over.

WaffleIronMaker 4y ago
I think the gaming market has changed significantly since Minesweeper and Solitaire were popular. Sure, it can be a nice quality of life boost to include some small games, but I don't think it would be a major draw to Linux. I believe the internet and mobile devices have largely filled this niche. Ensuring existing AAA games run solidly on Linux, like Valve is working towards with Proton, seems to have a much greater impact.
- robertlagrant 4y ago
  I agree entirely. Valve is taking the long, but correct, way round for this. I have a Linux computer with a GPU I game on, and I use Valve's compatibility layer for most of them.
throwaway744678 4y ago
Even more true for Nokia: people bought Nokia phones (3210, 3310, etc.) because of Snake!
mananaysiempre 4y ago
IIRC the official history says Minesweeper and Solitaire were both included as user-education devices—Minesweeper for teaching left- vs right-clicking and Solitaire for some other thing (drag&drop?). Not sure if the official history is true (wasn’t Freecell distributed as a Win32s test app?). Also, if anything I’d say the old, write-your-Xorg.conf-by-hand Linux desktop included more of these than the modern glossy one: Chromium B.S.U., Tux Racer, GNOME Robots (still in gnome-games I think), there were a ton of those. As well as xneko, xeyes and so on. Whereas on Windows you needed to look on computer magazine CDs and such to find the equivalent.

yieldcrv 4y ago

A decade ago mobile app gaming showed promise, no real hits but the medium showing that it has legs A decade later it is worse than anyone imagined, no real hits just a couple games from that earlier era because they’re the only ones you can play offline at all if I'm missing some gems let me know!

dokem 4y ago
Also mobile web. Mobile web is 100% broken as far as i'm concerned.
YurgenJurgensen 4y ago
I remember back when iPhone was just starting to take off, and a lot of the wide-eyed techno-futurists generally had some pithy retort to fans of the latest AAA console game of the form 'You can have your $40 console game, and I'll buy 40 $1 games and we'll see who has more fun'. Well, now the console games cost $70, but the mobile games are 'free'. In this case, 'free' evaluates to somewhere between $100,000 and $'Your Soul'.

lambic2 4y ago

I don't understand, is it because they do not want to change its monetization to ads and IAP's? How is having this game in the App Store making them lose money?

narrator 4y ago

It's not like there aren't a lot of other games to play out there. The market for mobile entertainment is about as competitive as any.

codepoet80 4y ago

If you've got an old HP Touchpad or Palm Pre handy, you can still get the original -- free of telemetry and micro-transactions: https://appcatalog.webosarchive.org/app/AngryBirds https://appcatalog.webosarchive.org/app/AngryBirds

aidenscott2016 4y ago
My first experience of Angry Bird was on a Palm Pixi. It was challenging.

hedora 4y ago

We need copyright reform for cases like this. In particular, copyright infringement damages should be capped at a small multiple of lost sales. That way, when a copyrighted work goes of market (or is no longer sold at a reasonable mass-market rate), there would be no penalty for redistributing it. (Derivative works might need to be handled differently, since the above effectively invalidates the GPL, though not Apache or BSD)

gspencley 4y ago
I have a nuanced take on this. Say, hypothetically, that I am the creator of a song, book, video game or whatever. One day, for purely selfish reasons that I don't need others to understand, I decide that I no longer want to offer my creation to others. Do I forfeit any and all rights over something that I personally produced; that I invented, designed, fabricated and brought into existence; just because I once offered it to others? I know that the law takes a more social look at the issue. After a while creative works enter the public domain and copyright is no longer recognized. The timeline varies and has been extended. I think right now it is the life of the author plus 75 years or something like that because of copyrights held by corporations rather than individuals. I don't know what the "right" length of time is. And for classics that have outlived the life of the creator and are "culturally significant" there is a broader discussion to be had. Beyond that scenario, the principal that I come at this from is that I, as a creator, rightfully recognize and defend my own rights to the things that I pour a significant portion of myself and life into. I made it, it's mine and therefore others can GTFO even if they disagree with me. Bill Waterson, of Calvin & Hobbes fame, had a similar view. In rare interviews he stated that the only audience he ever cared about was his wife. If he could make her laugh with the comics, that was all that mattered. Since retiring the comic he has held on to those rights very tightly. He has allowed a few reprints but otherwise does not license out the property much at all. He doesn't want any more Calvin & Hobbes works to be created. Agree or disagree, I recognize that as his right as the creator. You or I did not create Calvin & Hobbes, he did. It's his.
- no_time 4y ago
  > Do I forfeit any and all rights over something that I personally produced; that I invented, designed, fabricated and brought into existence; just because I once offered it to others? Nothing wrong with choosing not to engage in business. The problem arises when you want to stop people with the force of the government who want to plug the hole you've created.

beardog 4y ago

Huh, I would think ads and all the merchandise they sell would be enough.

mikejarema 4y ago

The announcement says it'll be renamed to "Red's First Flight" and be re-listed "pending further review". I wonder if this is simply a rebranding so that the original no longer appears for "Angry Birds" searches in the app store. Namely that subsequent versions make more $ per install, and having the original at a low price point is cannibalizing sales of the newer more profitable titles.

xd1936 4y ago
Then why only do that on iOS, and completely remove it from Android? The Play Store also supports renaming listings...
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago
  > why only do that on iOS Higher-margin market, which means hope for up-selling.
- altairprime 4y ago
  Think “scummy anti-SEO practices”. It’s so that when people search their Purchased Apps index for Angry Birds, having not recently installed it, the older flat-price no-IAP version isn’t shown in the results, and they’ll be more likely to install an IAP version instead. (iOS lets you install apps you’ve installed previously, even if they’re delisted.)

cloudking 4y ago

That's a shame, one of the first great UX for mobile games. Nothing until that release quite matched the feeling of pulling a slingshot.

dokem 4y ago
Until I read your comment I was thinking about Flappy Bird, not Angry Birds. All the comments still made sense though.
- cloudking 4y ago
  Clearly the answer is Rovio should acquire and make Angry Flappy Birds.
- xeromal 4y ago
  Pretty sure the creator of flappy bird contemplated suicide or something like that so he removed it pretty early on.

rkangel 4y ago

If it's "too popular" why would you not just increase the price to like $10? It shouldn't which way you make money, as long as you make money.

dagw 4y ago
If you removed it and then re-list essentially the same game under a different name first then all the people who already own it will have to re-buy it next time they update their phone. If you just raise the price then those people who already bought it will get to keep playing for free, and that's just leaving money on the table.
- qrck13 4y ago
  If you just remove the listing, accounts who already own the game can still download the last published apk at any time - it can be found in "my apps". Even in case of free apps. In theory company can cripple the old version deliberately, but that would likely be against play store rules

stewx 4y ago

Anyone remember Tap Tap Revenge? Another game that was delisted a long time ago after a period of great popularity (15 million downloads in that game series, per Wikipedia).

protonbob 4y ago
That was my favorite mobile game of all time.
AlexandrB 4y ago
That was a great game and actually introduced me to several great songs. I always suspected one of the reasons they pulled it because they lost the license to the music in the game or would have to pay ongoing costs to maintain the license.

yamtaddle 4y ago

Still on the Apple App Store? I was so happy to find it on there a while back. Was surprised it was so cheap, though—I barely game at all on my phone, but would have paid quite a bit more than what they were charging for that game. Guess there's little hope of their re-releasing Seasons, then? That's the only other one I'd pay money for (or, indeed, even play for free).

gravitronic 4y ago

Just the end of the new software lifecycle: company revokes access and it disappears forever.

Kukumber 4y ago

Off-topic: What a poor way to make an announcement - low resolution image - red flashy background full of noise - blurry text My eyes are still burning

no_time 4y ago

With the magic of btdig.com you too can find all of their releases for PC and android alike. https://i.imgur.com/EcJugS8.png https://i.imgur.com/EcJugS8.png Another loss for paying customers, another win for pirates.

rchaud 4y ago

The mobile gaming landscape could have been completely different if Rovio charged a flat $10 for Angry Birds all those years ago. I'm sure they've made significantly more money by going freemium with ads, but in doing so they also poisoned the well of mobile gaming. Everything now is Pay to Win. Despite there being genuinely impressive games on mobile (Asphalt racing for one), the mechanics of how the game actually works makes me not want to play it.

justeleblanc 4y ago
It's not one company's decision ten years ago that shaped that whole behemoth of a market.
- philistine 4y ago
  It is. It's just that the culprit is Apple. No demos, IAPs for free games, 70% cut on all transactions, those are the actions that shaped the overwhelming part of the mobile market into a casino-in-everything--but-name.
  - AlexandrB 4y ago
    > casino-in-everything--but-name Still hoping that games with "surprise mechanics"[1] get legislated into the 18+ bucket one day. That would not only keep many kids from blowing their parents' credit cards on gems but make this business model less attractive by shrinking the market. [1] https://www.ign.com/articles/2019/06/20/ea-defends-loot-boxes-calls-them-surprise-mechanics https://www.ign.com/articles/2019/06/20/ea-defends-loot-boxe...
- rchaud 4y ago
  They were the first hit game on iOS, they set the standard for monetization strategy in the then-nascent app store world.
kachurovskiy 4y ago
I'm willing to bet that the wast majority of Angry Bird users (including myself) didn't have a payment method on file at the time of install, much less would agree to spend $10 on it.

causi 4y ago

What kind of dumpster-fire developer gets out-competed by a game they released fourteen years ago targeted at a platform with a 320x480 screen and 128MB of RAM?

insane_dreamer 4y ago
ads and pay-to-play

jdlyga 4y ago

I lost faith in Rovio when they started advertising fake game footage on TikTok. They're just a clickbait company now.

JohnFen 4y ago
I was disgusted by them when they came down hard on people making games similar in style to Angry Birds -- because Angry Birds itself is a ripoff of another game.

forevergreenyon 4y ago

future online tutorial: "How to 'write' your first "hello world!" program" step 1: find the "hello word!" app in the store step 2: buy it step 3: done! you're now 'programming' your device!!!

hbn 4y ago

The mobile games industry is such a mess and it worries me that kids are only being exposed to video games that are 80% watching ads and begging for microtransactions. If this is the standard, they may never expect more. On the other hand, I find solace that we still have games like Elden Ring coming out that are a one-time purchase, finely crafted experience that manage to sell like gangbusters.

cptcobalt 4y ago

I don't disagree with everyone's reactions of "they're probably making a bad game if their original with the least microtransactions is the most popular"—but there's also one key point I don't see being elevated enough: archival. It's relatively silly that when they pull these games, there's very little way to get them back—see flappy bird, for instance. With classic game consoles, you still have the install/play media like discs and cartridges. With digital downloads, you don't—and if you do, you still need some sort of code or receipt signing to play, even if you have the binary. That's not great—we're going to have games lost to time. Sure, maybe not Angry Birds for its cultural influence, but others? Definitely.

Karliss 4y ago

Interesting fact. The version they unlisted is not only remake of original one, it's their latest (or at least one of the latest) released Angry Bird games. It was released in 2022. The other games they want you to play instead are technically older. When making this remake they could have included whatever modern monetization schemes they wanted (as long as it doesn't require too much changes to gameplay itself). Actual original one was removed in 2019. Removing their latest(remake) because it's too popular, make the whole thing more funny than removing actual original version which would be ~14 years old at this point.

reiichiroh 4y ago

It’s PopCap situation all over again after EA

perryizgr8 4y ago

I must say I am astonished at the current state of mobile "gaming". All this talent and money and I still got more enjoyment and gameplay out of free newgrounds flash games developed by a single man in his spare time.