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Comment by mangoman | Hacker News Reader

Honestly, I wouldn't mind ads if they weren't so obtrusive. a simple ad on a loading screen isn't the end of the world to me. What's annoying is trying to tap a tiny 'x', unskippable video ads, ads that try to fingerprint my device, ads that slow down my machine, ads with volume, time limiting play unless you buy an IAP (when there's no option for just buying unlimited time for a reasonable price)

I want game devs to be able to make a living, but there's a difference between game devs who responsibly put in monetization and game devs just trying to squeeze every last cent through deceit and manipulation.

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I want devs to be able to make a living too, that's why I have ad-supported games on the list, as long as you can disable every single ad with a payment. What I hate is devs seeing me as a wallet to wring as much money out of as possible by preying on my addiction/impulses.

I love to see games that have one-time payments to permanently remove ads. This lets the creators provide a free-ish demo, but also may provide some residual income. It also allows players with less money support the creators.

Over the years though, I have found that shady creators find ways around this. I paid about $10 on "Scrabble Free" a bunch of years ago to get rid of ads. What EA did was essentially abandon this version of the app, and eventually it would not run on modern android versions and replaced it with "Scrabble" Then later to finish the deception, they renamed "Scrabble Free" to "ZZZScrabble free."

Considering the amount of time I spent playing that game and the relatively cheap price, I can't complain too much, but the new game has no option to skip ads, a bunch of in-app purchases, annoying notifications some of which let you straight up cheat. Meanwhile, I have an old scrabble cd-rom from the late 90s that might run right out of the box on my windows laptop, and worst case can easily run under an emulator and I can happily play distraction free until the end of my days.

I'd rather prefer the demo version be published as an separate app, since you can't remove the advertising SDKs entirely even after you pay. Even if the developer was payed and stopped displaying ads, advertising companies have zero incentive to actually disable their code. It might still be spying on users in the background, and you can't be sure about it unless you go to great lengths to see what servers the app is communicating with. Worse, even if the SDK did actually stop functioning, it might be too late since you can't disable ads before first launch.

They are in the list, marked with "One-time purchase".

Can you put that one time purchase price in the price column? So it's not just listed as "free"

I don't always know it, unfortunately.

Why not just charge money for games? Seems like a reasonable way for them to make money...

Because the app economy doesn't reward that kind of behaviour. A free game will get more downloads than a paid game. Kids are the biggest consumers of mobile games and they can't download it if it's paid and they don't have a credit card set on their account.

Obscure games with low sales will fall off the rankings pretty quickly. And that's before you consider that there are only a few successful game types (Clash of Clans, Tower Defense, Candy Crush) and probably 10 different clones of each out there. How would you stand out?

This incentivizes devs to just put out a game for free, load it up with ads and hope that it gets enough downloads for it to become an acquisition target.

Eh, as a kid in the 80s and 90s, we were by far the biggest consumers of console games which cost up to $50-$60, in 1980s dollars, and Nintendo had no problem making money.

Maybe it would be a good thing if children couldn't wantonly download adware without their parents inspecting it?

Nintendo also made money because developers paid them license fees to build on Nintendo's platform. I didn't play anything beyond the Gamecube, but I remember there being many more non-Nintendo titles than in-house productions. In this example, Nintendo is Google, taking a cut on each of those 3rd party games.

You're forgetting that you could rent games from Blockbuster before you bought them back then and some consoles had demo disks. You can't rent mobile games to try them before you buy them.

Freemium is the modern/mobile game demo.

If you have kids, try Apple Arcade.

Not sure why they can't just bring back shareware without needing ads. Allow users to download the game for free, but if they want to play more than the first level/area/whatever, they have to buy the game.

Because there are too many games out there competing for your attention. Word of mouth today doesn't work in the way it did back when Doom I legitimized the shareware model. Today, if someone told you about a cool indie studio game and you looked it up online, you'd likely see ads for competing games appear in search results before the actual page.

It should go without saying that Doom was also an incredibly unique game for its time, and the blood-and-guts controversy likely helped spread word about it just as much as the distribution model did.

But it's still free to download the demo...

How does including ads in your app make it more likely to be found in the search results?

You could buy entire games on the app store for the same price it cost to rent them in the 80s and 90s

Why I'm a big fan of such games that also offer a remove-ad's one of fee option. Simple and elegant way to handle many area's - try before buy is covered and allows people the choice.

Not all games/apps work with that approach, but many do and I'm all for fair choice.

Apple Arcade is awesome. $5/month for top tier titles, all of which have no IAP or ads. There are some seriously great games there with voice acting and beautiful artwork etc. You can't beat the price and they add new stuff constantly.

Just a few that I have installed right now, but there are a ton more:

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/pilgrims/id1296855328

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/jenny-leclue-detectivu/id88256...

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/tangle-tower/id1437742603

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/sayonara-wild-hearts/id1441675...

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/dead-end-job/id1461747354

Then you create a soft ceiling and miss out on the whales that will spend $1K a month to have a shinier hat.

Yes many of those games litterly throw their freemium players as cannon fodder to those whales.

Few get the balance right and many will always tip one way on the odd patch, pandering to the whales - who after all - spend money.

Though the games that just offer hats and other cosmetics, well, you have to love those and certainly a solution that appeases all and rich fools are not to be scoffed at in such games as they are paying for it to carry on.

For some, “missing out” on that kinda exploitation is the reason for not doing it.

I’m not interested in the nicotine business for the same reasons, regardless of how much each smoking whale is worth.

Still waiting to hear a downside :)

> ads that try to fingerprint my device

pretty sure they all do ...

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