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Perfect example of why you should roll your own platform libraries, or at least try to use an open source engine that allows you to control the servers. All th
by PythonDeveloper 14y ago
Perfect example of why you should roll your own platform libraries, or at least try to use an open source engine that allows you to control the servers.
All those users just lost faith in yet another service, and all these guys are doing is saying "Hey, we failed you as a SAAS vendor, but we made $100 million, so lube up and try GREE because they need to [overcharge you voraciously to] recoup their investment.
You'd think the geniuses in the game industry could put their collective [self acclaimed] intellects together to come up with a platform agnostic approach to these common issues, and open source it for the betterment of the customer.
Oh, yeah... the... customer. Oops.
>>>>>>>>>>> UPDATE <<<<<<<<<<
OOH.. and it gets better... From GREE's agreement, paraphrased:
ARTICLE 5: Virtual Currency; Revenue Sharing
We've created our own currencies, not unlike BitCoin, called J-Coins and G-Coins. We reserve the right to change the ratios to capture more revenue, but right now you should just trust us that we're being honest.
Customers will pay US, not you. We'll tell you how much they spent of that money with you, and then pay you what we think is fair, in our sole discretion.
Oh yeah, to further confuse the customer, you can't call YOUR currency anything like ours, and we get to decide what you call it, and if you don't change it, we don't have to pay you.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Where the f* do I SIGN UP!!!
- jschuur 14y agoI don't think rolling your own, or hosting your own is a feasible option for indie mobile and social game developers in the current climate short development cycles and small budgets.
- slashclee 14y agoThe whole POINT of OpenFeint was basically: Hey, indie game developers! We know that building and running a game server is really hard and expensive. Why don't you let us run the servers for you, and you just use our (fairly simple and easy-to-integrate) SDK to make some calls to set high scores and unlock achievements?
- PythonDeveloper 14y agoExactly, and they sold out and screwed the indies. If you think OpenFeint had issues, just try getting your concerns addressed now that (a) GREE is in Japan, (b) time shifted 13 or so hours ahead of the US, and (c) works in YEN and uses at least two levels of currency conversion to compute your revenues.
- slashclee 14y agoI actually used to work at OpenFeint (and was there through the GREE acquisition). This is a sad day for me.
- tlrobinson 14y agoYou have two options: 1. Use a hosted service, and IF they end up shutting down either migrate to another similar service or roll your own. 2. Roll your own from the start. I'm having a hard time seeing why option 2 is better. Just make sure the services you use give you a clean migration path. A lot of game developers don't have experience building web services, so it makes sense to outsource the things that aren't their core competency. Do we really want every game developer rolling their own potentially unreliable, unscalable, insecure web services?
- josephlord 14y agoI came to the same conclusion for adding usage logging and promo codes to my app. Use Parse for now but try not to use too much of their API and to keep it to a couple of particular lasses that I access it through so that if I need to move it is just a day changing the app and one or two setting up and securing a server with a database. Not a game but a lists app focussed on reusable lists for things like shopping and packing with a couple of neat features. Http://iTunes.com/apps/fastlists. Free with in-apps if you like it. I haven't decided how to do shared lists yet, iCloud, Parse, custom server or something else.