Between terrible incentives created by Apple's cut structure, and Apple's disregard for backwards compatibility, mobile indie devs never stood a chance. Rami from Vlambeer said it well.
“You earn $3 and then you update it for the next 10 years. If you’re making free-to-play games, if you keep earning money with a game, yeah, that’s a great model because you can make more money by updating.”
Ismail pointed to Vlambeer’s “Ridiculous Fishing,” which won a number of awards from gaming publications and Apple.
“‘Ridiculous Fishing’ is never going to make more money,” he said. “Yeah, some new people might buy it, but we made our money with ‘Ridiculous Fishing’ in 2013 and that money is spent, It’s spent on ‘Luftrausers.’ It’s spent on ‘Nuclear Throne.’ If somebody upgrades their phones to the new iPhone. Yeah. You have ‘Ridiculous Fishing’ in your account, Yeah you paid $3 for it. Yeah, it’s broken.”
That’s what caused the last major update Vlambeer did for the game. A major change by Apple in 2017 that switched from 32-bit to 64-bit apps, breaking a slew of content on their phones … including “Ridiculous Fishing.”
“All games broke,” he said, “Every game that wasn’t programmed for it broke. We updated ‘Ridiculous Fishing’ then but it feels like a mistake almost. It feels like, OK it’s 2018 and this game that we made money with that somebody bought in 2013 is now broken outside of our fault. We didn’t change anything. We didn’t break the game. We didn’t introduce a bug, but this continuous ecosystem that Apple has created, that comes with you with every new phone, broke it. “
Ismail said that either Apple has to start designing for backward compatibility support on their end or that people are going to have to get used to the idea of games dying and disappearing.
“Some of the best ios games from 2010 are gone,” he said. “Those developers, they don’t exist anymore. They went out of business. They split up. They started a new thing and they just don’t have the money or time to do it.”
Well said. Apple has no incentive to improve backwards compatibility because they make more money keeping the transactions flowing. People being apple to use their applications for a long time is bad for business. Unfortunately the market hasn't punished them for this behaviour, so they keep doing it.
“You earn $3 and then you update it for the next 10 years. If you’re making free-to-play games, if you keep earning money with a game, yeah, that’s a great model because you can make more money by updating.”
Ismail pointed to Vlambeer’s “Ridiculous Fishing,” which won a number of awards from gaming publications and Apple.
“‘Ridiculous Fishing’ is never going to make more money,” he said. “Yeah, some new people might buy it, but we made our money with ‘Ridiculous Fishing’ in 2013 and that money is spent, It’s spent on ‘Luftrausers.’ It’s spent on ‘Nuclear Throne.’ If somebody upgrades their phones to the new iPhone. Yeah. You have ‘Ridiculous Fishing’ in your account, Yeah you paid $3 for it. Yeah, it’s broken.”
That’s what caused the last major update Vlambeer did for the game. A major change by Apple in 2017 that switched from 32-bit to 64-bit apps, breaking a slew of content on their phones … including “Ridiculous Fishing.”
“All games broke,” he said, “Every game that wasn’t programmed for it broke. We updated ‘Ridiculous Fishing’ then but it feels like a mistake almost. It feels like, OK it’s 2018 and this game that we made money with that somebody bought in 2013 is now broken outside of our fault. We didn’t change anything. We didn’t break the game. We didn’t introduce a bug, but this continuous ecosystem that Apple has created, that comes with you with every new phone, broke it. “
Ismail said that either Apple has to start designing for backward compatibility support on their end or that people are going to have to get used to the idea of games dying and disappearing.
“Some of the best ios games from 2010 are gone,” he said. “Those developers, they don’t exist anymore. They went out of business. They split up. They started a new thing and they just don’t have the money or time to do it.”
https://variety.com/2019/gaming/features/android-ios-apple-g...