The next big thing for Apple to clean up – Games | Hacker News Reader

The next big thing for Apple to clean up – Games

4 pointsjay_kyburz1 comment

On one hand we read a lot about how Apple is working hard to improve its product for its end users, especially with regard to privacy.

But Games on iOS are either overflowing with ads or relying on predatory loot box and gambling addiction (The overspending of whales).

The iPad is an amazing device for gaming, but the ecosystem, the culture perhaps, is broken. Who wants to play games with an ad every 15 seconds? Who wants to play a game that is constantly trying to convince you to spend more, and more, and more.

On the other hand, the PC and Console game industry is holding it's breath in anticipation of the coming storm that everybody is calling the Netflix of Games. What will the coming war do to our industry? Microsoft has played it's hand with Game Pass. Amazon and Google have plans in the works.

I really want to play more games on my iPad, and I'd pay $10 a month for a big library of games, with a new one each week. Games that are designed just to be fun. Games without ads or in app purchases. No gems to grind, no paywalls.

I don't think Apple would want to run the service themselves, but they could do things in the store to make it more attractive for a somebody with deep pockets push in and try and set up a Netfix of Games on iOS.

I for one would love to start making games for my favourite platform again.

A $10 gaming service would be great. Rewarding developers based on percentage of time in each game might be nice, or it might mean that (again) Fortnite gets all the money. Not sure what would happen. It may make more sense to reward developers for as long as games remain installed on the device.

I’m honestly astounded at how poorly Apple polices in-app purchases. You really don’t have to spend more than about 30 seconds to find games with hundreds and hundreds of dollars worth of in-app purchases that are extremely obvious scams. There is simply no possible way one game could ever be worth as much money as these purchases could get. I am saddened to imagine people actually buying most of these “gem bag” things, probably multiple times, at ridiculous prices that approach a month’s rent.

And you keep hearing about all the new evil tricks that these scam artists learn. Ways to trick people into subscriptions. Apps that mysteriously start out free or really cheap and “evolve” into scams with purchases later, where functionality is “updated” to be hamstrung without the purchase. And on and on.

I am one of those developers that refuses to add in-app purchases because I think they’re basically garbage that make games unplayable. And guess what: my reward for having the audacity to set an up-front price is that I am absolutely certain I am selling way, way, way fewer units than even a single scam game does, and I make way, way less money. And to be honest, it is not economically feasible at all; I only put it out there because I want to. It could never be my full-time job, or even a part-time job.

Making a game “just to be fun”, as you say, can only be done by developers that have absolutely zero interest in making money on today’s App Stores.

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