13 ms·

I won't play any iOS game with either ads or with a "free but micro-transaction model." If you look in the pay up front category on the app store, there are ver

by tensor 4y ago

I won't play any iOS game with either ads or with a "free but micro-transaction model." If you look in the pay up front category on the app store, there are very very few games. It's too bad.

gjsman-1000 4y ago
I think we should really call out Apple and Google for mismanagement here. Imagine if there was the option to play a game for an hour as a free trial, and then buy the game instead of having to plunk down $4.99 sight-unseen - or having your game in the Free category with the microtransaction shovelware around it. If I'm the developer who wants users to have any semblance of try-before-you-buy, the free category (with an IAP for "Premium") is the only option. Which is a real shame.
- falcolas 4y ago
  Games could still do this (via a single one-time "microtransaction"), and some do this. But standard microtransactions are stupidly profitable, enough to tempt most devs. And, frankly, the gaming industry at large has proven that paying up front does not prevent microtransactions. Even in mobile games.
  - JohnFen 4y ago
    But the pool has been poisoned already. If I see that an app uses microtransactions, I won't install that app -- so I'd never even know that the microtransaction was to purchase the game outright.
    - falcolas 4y ago
      I get that. But you can preview what micro transactions are offered prior to purchasing, which is progress.
      - JohnFen 4y ago
        Is that an Apple thing? I don't remember seeing anything like that in the android Play Store. That would be useful.
        falcolas 4y ago
        I thought it was both stores, but yes, I'm referring to the Apple app store.
        JohnFen 4y ago
        I just checked. I don't see anything like this in the Play Store, sadly.
- yamtaddle 4y ago
  They don't even need to do much, just add a category for developers who want to have a free + single-IAP-to-unlock-the-whole-thing version, and let people search that category specifically. No need for Apple to enforce time limits or anything. The trouble now isn't that demos can't exist, but that it's hard to tell which IAP-bearing apps are just full version unlocks and which are whale-chasing bullshit. For that matter, just segregating games with any "consumable" IAP from those without would probably help a lot.
- scarface74 4y ago
  It still wouldn’t help. There is nothing stopping a developer from releasing a free game with a single in app purchase that unlocks everything.
- branko_d 4y ago
  I always wondered why Apple can't implement something similar to Steam refunds. Quote from https://store.steampowered.com/steam_refunds https://store.steampowered.com/steam_refunds: You can request a refund for nearly any purchase on Steam—for any reason. Maybe your PC doesn't meet the hardware requirements; maybe you bought a game by mistake; maybe you played the title for an hour and just didn't like it. It doesn't matter. Valve will, upon request via help.steampowered.com, issue a refund for any reason, if the request is made within the required return period, and, in the case of games, if the title has been played for less than two hours.
  - cld8483 4y ago
    For all their faults (Steam is glorified DRM), the people at Valve seem to actually understand gamers and have gaming in their own blood. Apple has never understood gaming and I doubt they ever will.
  - JohnFen 4y ago
    I mean, even Google has a policy like this (with a tighter time limit).
- Marsymars 4y ago
  It's not a well-supported/advertised path, but you can always download a pay-for game for an hour and then get a refund if you don't like it. Google at least used to do automatic refunds if you uninstalled a pay-for app very quickly - I once had that happen with a utility app that I used to convert some stuff - since it worked exactly like I wanted, I re-purchased and left it installed for a few days.
- tdeck 4y ago
  Mismanagement? Do you realize some people spend tens of thousands of dollars a month on in-game micro transactions? Yes I do mean individual people. These people are basically the entire revenue stream for the Play Store. Of course they're not going to discourage that business model. On a less discouraging note, there is a "try now" button in the Play store that games can implement. You can upload a lightweight version of the game for people to play without installing / paying for the game.
wlesieutre 4y ago
The "Top Paid" category isn't really the whole story, since there's no official "free demo" system in the app store. Instead, games are set up as a "free + microtransactions" and then the only in app purchase is "buy the whole game." But unless you look closely down at the bottom of the store page, you can't distinguish games like this from the microtransaction trash. PinOut comes to mind as an example, I'm sure there are many others: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/pinout/id1108417718 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/pinout/id1108417718 In-App Purchases PinOut Premium $2.99
- JadoJodo 4y ago
  I'm sure there are app devs that use this to offer a "free demo", but I suspect the bulk of them use it because IAPs aren't subject to Family Sharing the way that paid apps are.
Jasper_ 4y ago
Google and Apple aggressively push developers to use IAPs rather than up-front paid games, and often won't feature games & apps costing more than 99c. They incentivized the current market.
- qwytw 4y ago
  I think the demo/trial model is still very reasonable. You get to download the game for free and play a level or two and then you need to purchase the full game to continue. Of course the problem is that it's sometimes a bit hard to tell apart games like this from the P2W micro-transaction shovelware junk
  - jaywalk 4y ago
    On the app store page for the game, you can see all of the in-app purchases available. If there's only one for the full game, you're safe. If there's a bunch of different coin/whatever purchases available, stay away.
tombert 4y ago
I'm right up there with you. I will admit that paying like $15 four years ago for Stardew Valley on iOS felt a bit weird, but $15 is pretty cheap considering that it's the full game. It doesn't make you buy gems every twenty minutes, or watch an ad every time you plant six crops, or spam your friend to share your status for some extra gold. It's a full game, and you pay a nominally-high-but-ultimately-reasonable price for it. Similarly, The Binding of Isaac is also a pretty good iOS game. I don't remember how much I paid, but it was slightly higher than average, but it doesn't spam me with any microtransaction crap.
- JohnFen 4y ago
  $15 is a screaming deal for a game like Stardew Valley.
  - tombert 4y ago
    Yeah, honestly, for the amount of content you get in that game, it's insane. That's not even taking into account the fact that it still gets free updates. It's definitely my go-to recommendation when people ask about good iOS games.
  - gen220 4y ago
    I imagine that a lot of people would retroactively pay $100 (i.e. future-you would be able to easily convince past-you that paying $100 is worth it). I wonder what mechanisms exist for capitalizing on that retroactive price. You can obviously make the up-front price higher, but this obviously erects a barrier to people experiencing the retroactive value. Some other ones that come to mind: paid DLC, "remastered" versions released N years later (Skyrim has famously done this. I think I've paid for 3 or 4 $60 versions of Skyrim at this point), and open "tip" jars / patreon style support. Any other ideas?
    - tombert 4y ago
      In regards to Stardew Valley specifically, I ended up purchasing it on multiple other platforms after I bought it on iPhone.
speeder 4y ago
I had a startup that made games in the pay up front model (with variants, like having a free episode and then selling more episodes, or demo + paid version, etc...) It just doesn't work, people don't want to buy stuff when on mobile, they just don't. The price made no difference in sales either, could be high, low, 99c, whatever, people just ignore your game and get only the free versions. On Android this is even worse than iOS, my startup could had SOME sales on iOS, on Android we had millions of downloads and literally zero sales.
- JohnFen 4y ago
  The fact that most apps are ad-based is what drove me away from the app store entirely on Android. It's impossible to tell what's actually free, and it's hard to find honest apps that you can just pay for instead of dealing with ads or microtransactions. So I would never have seen your app. I was already driven out of the "ecosystem". I wonder how many others are like me -- fully willing to pay, but so disgusted by the app scene that we aren't even there anymore.
hesdeadjim 4y ago
Apple Arcade provides a ton of value in this regard. No ads, no micro transactions, games like they used to be. Funny enough given this article, they have Angry Birds 1 remastered. It’s the only games I’ll let my six year old play on her iPad. It’s disgusting to me that her first experiences playing games would be one’s trying to get her to buy stuff or watch ads.
- germinalphrase 4y ago
  I have no affiliation, but Zoombinis is a nice kids logic game throwback. They have released an IOS port for a few bucks.
joenot443 4y ago
Tell me about it. I'm an iOS engineer at FAANG, but I've been shipping my own apps since 2011. It's depressing that there's no longer a market for paid, high quality, ad-free, fully packaged apps and games. I actually interned at a mobile games studio for a summer and it was made clear to me what the profit model was: pander solely to the whales, ignore the free users. Something like 70% of our revenue came from 2% of our users. Super bleak and helped contribute to my realization that there's just not reliable money to be made as a solo iOS dev anymore. Better to collect a paycheck building someone else's app.
- milsorgen 4y ago
  >It's depressing that there's no longer a market for paid, high quality, ad-free, fully packaged apps and games. I can't tell you how crazy it is on Android, to find a killer app that does something that's exactly what I'm looking for and to see perhaps it has or is a paid version, usually for just a few bucks, and I to go-to the store page and see some ridiculously small number under downloads. People will put up with a lot of cruft for free. Even worse in terms of apps and games is that younger people I know don't bat an eye at most it whether it be ads or IAPs. A younger guy I talk tech with will happily pay to win in games he plays, or expensive cosmetics, and he doesn't consider it at all. It's just how things are and he enjoys it. Sometimes I tactfully ask, where is the game if you just buy X or Y? And I don't think he quite gets what I'm hinting at and he's one of the most tech savvy zoomers I know.
- dgb23 4y ago
  Is that the only conclusion? There's a subset of users who are hungry for high quality applications and games. They will happily pay for substantial extensions and content upgrades. They will remember your name and see anything you release as worth considering. It's a smaller market of course but a sustainable one. In terms of video games. I'm personally not a mobile gamer though. Maybe it's quite a bit different from desktop and console.
  - itsoktocry 4y ago
    >There's a subset of users who are hungry for high quality applications and games. They will happily pay for substantial extensions and content upgrades. Can you point to someone having this sort of success based on this model in the mobile space?
dbspin 4y ago
Lots of great games on Apple arcade. All add free and microtransaction free. Pay to rent but pretty low cost, and lots of them are not available on any other platform.
cptskippy 4y ago
Android is in the same situation.
mysterydip 4y ago
That's because games where you pay once get dropped so far down in downloads compared to "free" ones. I've had people tell me to my face "your ($1) game costs too much" while sipping their daily $5 latte.
wellthisisgreat 4y ago
luckily there are still good quality games that can fill in some downtime / waiting. Highly recommend "Slay the Spire", "Dead Cells" and any of Trese Brothers games. Of the free games "Vampire Survivors" is really good and not intrusive with ads (I think it's some kind of altruistic business model).

by tensor 4y ago

I won't play any iOS game with either ads or with a "free but micro-transaction model." If you look in the pay up front category on the app store, there are very very few games. It's too bad.

gjsman-1000 4y ago

I think we should really call out Apple and Google for mismanagement here. Imagine if there was the option to play a game for an hour as a free trial, and then buy the game instead of having to plunk down $4.99 sight-unseen - or having your game in the Free category with the microtransaction shovelware around it. If I'm the developer who wants users to have any semblance of try-before-you-buy, the free category (with an IAP for "Premium") is the only option. Which is a real shame.

falcolas 4y ago
Games could still do this (via a single one-time "microtransaction"), and some do this. But standard microtransactions are stupidly profitable, enough to tempt most devs. And, frankly, the gaming industry at large has proven that paying up front does not prevent microtransactions. Even in mobile games.
- JohnFen 4y ago
  But the pool has been poisoned already. If I see that an app uses microtransactions, I won't install that app -- so I'd never even know that the microtransaction was to purchase the game outright.
  - falcolas 4y ago
    I get that. But you can preview what micro transactions are offered prior to purchasing, which is progress.
    - JohnFen 4y ago
      Is that an Apple thing? I don't remember seeing anything like that in the android Play Store. That would be useful.
      - falcolas 4y ago
        I thought it was both stores, but yes, I'm referring to the Apple app store.
        JohnFen 4y ago
        I just checked. I don't see anything like this in the Play Store, sadly.
yamtaddle 4y ago
They don't even need to do much, just add a category for developers who want to have a free + single-IAP-to-unlock-the-whole-thing version, and let people search that category specifically. No need for Apple to enforce time limits or anything. The trouble now isn't that demos can't exist, but that it's hard to tell which IAP-bearing apps are just full version unlocks and which are whale-chasing bullshit. For that matter, just segregating games with any "consumable" IAP from those without would probably help a lot.
scarface74 4y ago
It still wouldn’t help. There is nothing stopping a developer from releasing a free game with a single in app purchase that unlocks everything.
branko_d 4y ago
I always wondered why Apple can't implement something similar to Steam refunds. Quote from https://store.steampowered.com/steam_refunds https://store.steampowered.com/steam_refunds: You can request a refund for nearly any purchase on Steam—for any reason. Maybe your PC doesn't meet the hardware requirements; maybe you bought a game by mistake; maybe you played the title for an hour and just didn't like it. It doesn't matter. Valve will, upon request via help.steampowered.com, issue a refund for any reason, if the request is made within the required return period, and, in the case of games, if the title has been played for less than two hours.
- cld8483 4y ago
  For all their faults (Steam is glorified DRM), the people at Valve seem to actually understand gamers and have gaming in their own blood. Apple has never understood gaming and I doubt they ever will.
- JohnFen 4y ago
  I mean, even Google has a policy like this (with a tighter time limit).
Marsymars 4y ago
It's not a well-supported/advertised path, but you can always download a pay-for game for an hour and then get a refund if you don't like it. Google at least used to do automatic refunds if you uninstalled a pay-for app very quickly - I once had that happen with a utility app that I used to convert some stuff - since it worked exactly like I wanted, I re-purchased and left it installed for a few days.
tdeck 4y ago
Mismanagement? Do you realize some people spend tens of thousands of dollars a month on in-game micro transactions? Yes I do mean individual people. These people are basically the entire revenue stream for the Play Store. Of course they're not going to discourage that business model. On a less discouraging note, there is a "try now" button in the Play store that games can implement. You can upload a lightweight version of the game for people to play without installing / paying for the game.

wlesieutre 4y ago

The "Top Paid" category isn't really the whole story, since there's no official "free demo" system in the app store. Instead, games are set up as a "free + microtransactions" and then the only in app purchase is "buy the whole game." But unless you look closely down at the bottom of the store page, you can't distinguish games like this from the microtransaction trash. PinOut comes to mind as an example, I'm sure there are many others: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/pinout/id1108417718 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/pinout/id1108417718 In-App Purchases PinOut Premium $2.99

JadoJodo 4y ago
I'm sure there are app devs that use this to offer a "free demo", but I suspect the bulk of them use it because IAPs aren't subject to Family Sharing the way that paid apps are.

Jasper_ 4y ago

Google and Apple aggressively push developers to use IAPs rather than up-front paid games, and often won't feature games & apps costing more than 99c. They incentivized the current market.

qwytw 4y ago
I think the demo/trial model is still very reasonable. You get to download the game for free and play a level or two and then you need to purchase the full game to continue. Of course the problem is that it's sometimes a bit hard to tell apart games like this from the P2W micro-transaction shovelware junk
- jaywalk 4y ago
  On the app store page for the game, you can see all of the in-app purchases available. If there's only one for the full game, you're safe. If there's a bunch of different coin/whatever purchases available, stay away.

tombert 4y ago

I'm right up there with you. I will admit that paying like $15 four years ago for Stardew Valley on iOS felt a bit weird, but $15 is pretty cheap considering that it's the full game. It doesn't make you buy gems every twenty minutes, or watch an ad every time you plant six crops, or spam your friend to share your status for some extra gold. It's a full game, and you pay a nominally-high-but-ultimately-reasonable price for it. Similarly, The Binding of Isaac is also a pretty good iOS game. I don't remember how much I paid, but it was slightly higher than average, but it doesn't spam me with any microtransaction crap.

JohnFen 4y ago
$15 is a screaming deal for a game like Stardew Valley.
- tombert 4y ago
  Yeah, honestly, for the amount of content you get in that game, it's insane. That's not even taking into account the fact that it still gets free updates. It's definitely my go-to recommendation when people ask about good iOS games.
- gen220 4y ago
  I imagine that a lot of people would retroactively pay $100 (i.e. future-you would be able to easily convince past-you that paying $100 is worth it). I wonder what mechanisms exist for capitalizing on that retroactive price. You can obviously make the up-front price higher, but this obviously erects a barrier to people experiencing the retroactive value. Some other ones that come to mind: paid DLC, "remastered" versions released N years later (Skyrim has famously done this. I think I've paid for 3 or 4 $60 versions of Skyrim at this point), and open "tip" jars / patreon style support. Any other ideas?
  - tombert 4y ago
    In regards to Stardew Valley specifically, I ended up purchasing it on multiple other platforms after I bought it on iPhone.

speeder 4y ago

I had a startup that made games in the pay up front model (with variants, like having a free episode and then selling more episodes, or demo + paid version, etc...) It just doesn't work, people don't want to buy stuff when on mobile, they just don't. The price made no difference in sales either, could be high, low, 99c, whatever, people just ignore your game and get only the free versions. On Android this is even worse than iOS, my startup could had SOME sales on iOS, on Android we had millions of downloads and literally zero sales.

JohnFen 4y ago
The fact that most apps are ad-based is what drove me away from the app store entirely on Android. It's impossible to tell what's actually free, and it's hard to find honest apps that you can just pay for instead of dealing with ads or microtransactions. So I would never have seen your app. I was already driven out of the "ecosystem". I wonder how many others are like me -- fully willing to pay, but so disgusted by the app scene that we aren't even there anymore.

hesdeadjim 4y ago

Apple Arcade provides a ton of value in this regard. No ads, no micro transactions, games like they used to be. Funny enough given this article, they have Angry Birds 1 remastered. It’s the only games I’ll let my six year old play on her iPad. It’s disgusting to me that her first experiences playing games would be one’s trying to get her to buy stuff or watch ads.

germinalphrase 4y ago
I have no affiliation, but Zoombinis is a nice kids logic game throwback. They have released an IOS port for a few bucks.

joenot443 4y ago

Tell me about it. I'm an iOS engineer at FAANG, but I've been shipping my own apps since 2011. It's depressing that there's no longer a market for paid, high quality, ad-free, fully packaged apps and games. I actually interned at a mobile games studio for a summer and it was made clear to me what the profit model was: pander solely to the whales, ignore the free users. Something like 70% of our revenue came from 2% of our users. Super bleak and helped contribute to my realization that there's just not reliable money to be made as a solo iOS dev anymore. Better to collect a paycheck building someone else's app.

milsorgen 4y ago
>It's depressing that there's no longer a market for paid, high quality, ad-free, fully packaged apps and games. I can't tell you how crazy it is on Android, to find a killer app that does something that's exactly what I'm looking for and to see perhaps it has or is a paid version, usually for just a few bucks, and I to go-to the store page and see some ridiculously small number under downloads. People will put up with a lot of cruft for free. Even worse in terms of apps and games is that younger people I know don't bat an eye at most it whether it be ads or IAPs. A younger guy I talk tech with will happily pay to win in games he plays, or expensive cosmetics, and he doesn't consider it at all. It's just how things are and he enjoys it. Sometimes I tactfully ask, where is the game if you just buy X or Y? And I don't think he quite gets what I'm hinting at and he's one of the most tech savvy zoomers I know.
dgb23 4y ago
Is that the only conclusion? There's a subset of users who are hungry for high quality applications and games. They will happily pay for substantial extensions and content upgrades. They will remember your name and see anything you release as worth considering. It's a smaller market of course but a sustainable one. In terms of video games. I'm personally not a mobile gamer though. Maybe it's quite a bit different from desktop and console.
- itsoktocry 4y ago
  >There's a subset of users who are hungry for high quality applications and games. They will happily pay for substantial extensions and content upgrades. Can you point to someone having this sort of success based on this model in the mobile space?

dbspin 4y ago

Lots of great games on Apple arcade. All add free and microtransaction free. Pay to rent but pretty low cost, and lots of them are not available on any other platform.

cptskippy 4y ago

Android is in the same situation.

mysterydip 4y ago

That's because games where you pay once get dropped so far down in downloads compared to "free" ones. I've had people tell me to my face "your ($1) game costs too much" while sipping their daily $5 latte.

wellthisisgreat 4y ago

luckily there are still good quality games that can fill in some downtime / waiting. Highly recommend "Slay the Spire", "Dead Cells" and any of Trese Brothers games. Of the free games "Vampire Survivors" is really good and not intrusive with ads (I think it's some kind of altruistic business model).