Microsoft cut off game maker's revenue stream, so he built his own replacement | Hacker News Reader

Microsoft cut off game maker's revenue stream, so he built his own replacement

cnbc.com

125 pointsaluket59 comments

"People don't consider my games worth what I spent to make them, so I'll sneak in adverts too so I don't have to charge them more and pop their little bubble, so they can continue thinking games are this cheap because the sticker price is still low."

No, this is not acceptable, and holding it up as a Good Thing that it's being perpetuated is stupid.

Microsoft have seen the writing on the wall (because it's been there for, I dunno, at least a decade?) and are saying 'you have to have an actual workable fucking business model now, k?'

Sounds reasonable to me - how else is he going to pay bills if not through some ad revenue? You know glorified 9 to 5 jobs are cool, but some of is indies prefer freedom - and that costs money.

Then you charge a reasonable price. You don't put a 'free' sticker on it with an unknowable 'ad revenue' cost in the background.

One might argue that the customer should know the price they pay in advertising data-scraping before logging in, these days, but we still convict people of fraud for taking advantage.

Advertising revenue is fraud.

That just means you'll go out of business then and the users will end up using a Chinese/Russian/other country (knockoff) instead with the same ads snuck in there. It costs a lot less to develop software in certain other countries.

You can justify any business with that kind of argument.

Justification doesn't exist in a vacuum, what you're justifying matters just as much, and showing ads from Microsoft is pretty low on the scale of evil things apps do for monetization.

Television has been paying for programming through ads for decades now. Do you think that's not a 'real' business model? A good business model is one that makes someone 7 figures a year for cloning solitaire. It might not be the most enjoyable gaming experience, but if purity of solitaire is what you want, then there are plenty of paid alternatives.

A massive difference here is that TV ads don't come with ubiquitous invasions of privacy every time you see them, nor do they have a small but constant risk of malware infecting your TV.

Not familiar with Smart TVs then, eh?

But as tv moves away from broadcast signals to VOD services that's going to change. See for an early example 4OD in the UK: https://www.thedrum.com/news/2017/04/28/behind-all-4s-new-pe...

> Channel 4 earlier this week unveiled a new video on demand advertising package allowing brands to directly address viewers - in practise this meant first adopters 20th Century Fox, Foster' and Ronseal, could grab the attention of by literally calling out their names in their creative.

> nor do they have a small but constant risk of malware infecting your TV.

The same goes for anything that you install / access on your devices, yet we aren't talking about removing theses capacities and I sure hope so that you won't argue that.

Google makes it's billions through advertising.

Google serves up adds along with it's search results and this guy serves up adds inside his games.

These seem like identical business models. Something for free with an advert attached.

This is what happens when participating in a race to the bottom. Mobile games are cheap because (due to current global economics) there is always someone prepared to clone your design and sell it cheaper. If you want to pay the bills, you need to find a market you can be profitable in. That might even be mobile gaming, if you can deliver IP or a franchise or a series that gets people to pay a reasonable price for your game rather than a bargain price for something similar to your game. Heck, if you get the IP right like Angry Birds you even get to undercut your competitors with a free price tag and no ads, driving your T-Shirt sales.

“Heck, if you get the IP right like Angry Birds you even get to undercut your competitors with a free price tag and no ads, driving your T-Shirt sales.”

Apparently you haven’t played Angry Birds 2. It’s riddled with upsells.

While I agree it is infuriatingly ironic that Microsoft does this themselves with Windows 10.

What people don't consider his games worth money? He offers them for free with ads and a lot of people happily accept. Were the marketplace rules changed to exclude all free games he may charge for his and people may buy them. I don't see a value judgement for the worth of his games here.

The f2p market will continue to slow [1] and this guy bought himself some time in his market. Good for him. A dead end story for the rest of us.

[1] https://www.deconstructoroffun.com/blog/four-reasons-why-the...

I don't feel bad for the game developer. Its business model is to publish simple classic games, but with ads.

Exactly. I hope Apple Arcade takes a big bite out of ad supported games on iOS.

However, if there is an option to pay for the games to get rid of ads, I have no problem with him publishing games and making money on either ads or people paying.

As long as there's an option to remove them, I look at ad-supported games as a demo. I'll always gladly pay to remove the ads if I like the game enough to play it more than a couple times.

The ad-supported version can be a disaster for your privacy though.

Plus, a lot of apps don't remove their ad SDK even if you do pay to not "see" the ads, so you are still being tracked either way.

Can be, but it's possible to serve ads without any activity/data tracking. Not as profitable, but that's how it used to be done - simply guessing what the users may be interested in and A/B testing ads for various niches until you hone in on the most profitable ones.

Ads are pretty cancerous, but the easiest way to start monetizing free content/software.

s/that/"I don't feel bad for the game developer, they don't gatekeep with their pricing model"

Framing adware as a socially progressive business model is nauseating.

>Its business model is to publish simple classic games, but with ads.

Is this not precisely what Microsoft is doing?

I haven't played game of solitaire since Windows 7 because I'm not going to watch a 15-30 second preroll video advertisement in order to play the Microsoft Solitaire Collection.

And I'm certainly not going to pay monthly to avoid ads for games that used to be included with the OS without advertisements.

Have you considered that perhaps it's not the ad itself but that it just takes a 15-30 seconds of a delay to maybe realize that you're about to waste your time / ease your boredom that maybe keeps you from playing?

Every ad on YouTube makes me reconsider how badly I want to watch the video. Lots of times I just close YouTube and pull up Bitchute.

Tangent: Is there anything on bitchute that isn't right-wing or conspiracy theory? I've just pulled it up for the first time and by the front-page videos it's an alt-right cesspool. I'll use the alternative if it's viable, but this content isn't.

I felt the same way. I ended up setting firewall rules for Minesweeper because there is absolutely no reason for it to be calling out to the web for ads to serve. The game still works fine!

The old games (and calculator) from xp through windows 8 still run just fine, all you need is the right files.

With NTVDMx64 and/or winevdm, you should even be able to run the even older WEP games (Tetris works nearly perfectly with winevdm)

> Its business model is to publish simple classic games, but with ads.

Can you explains what's wrong with this?

You are aware that some people enjoy playing simple classic games? You are aware that some people don't like or can't even use credit card online right? What's the solution do you bring that allow theses peoples to have entertainment? Are you going to bring them their simple classic games that they want for free? Why aren't you already doing it?

No one force you to play theses games, but in a weird way you enjoy seeing people losing a great source of entertainment. That's kind of worrying.

I sorta wonder what will happen to ads in Microsoft's own games (in particular Solitaire). I kinda hope they will be removed, but I doubt that would actually happen.

Microsoft is shutting down their ad service but there are plenty others. Why is this dev or his ad sdk interesting?

It's not.

What other ad services are there for Windows apps?

Building a business that relies on a platform you can’t function without is irresponsible. It’s not just bad for you because of how fragile it makes your business but it’s also bad for everyone else because it normalizes it and makes building stable businesses harder.

...but he can function without it. He built a replacement.

And there are others if his falls short: https://vungle.com/

Vungle is interstitials only; it doesn't have anywhere near the fill rates or yields as MSA.

You mean like every console game maker?

What's the alternative for native mobile apps today? Roll your own smartphone OS?

And yes, I'm deeply frustrated with Apple and Google for so forceably locking everyone into their walled gardens.

And what are you going to do about it? I'm researching Google-free LineageOS and checking out Librem's smartphone...

If you think there's ever going to be enough people flashing their phones with custom ROMs to support an industry of consumer software developers, I think you're going to be very disappointed.

Now, if we could get some major carriers and/or retailers backing Librem, that could be interesting. I'm not holding my breath, though.

Yeah, mostly the second. Though it doesn't stand much of a chance until something (more serious) is done about the GAFAM...

Because I know if it weren’t for Apple I would be downloading Random software from the Internet from an unknown developer and giving them my payment information.....

What's wrong with that? Much excellent software is still purchased in just this way

Or is trust a forgotten skill nowadays?

I don’t know - adware, viruses, etc.?

With the tight security of iOS and to a lesser extent Android, I know a random app can’t do anything except what I give it permission to do.

I’ll download and try any random crap on my iOS device, I’m very careful about what I install on my computer. Right now, my home computer has nothing more than the standard development tools. My other computer has Office, Vuze (for uhh downloading Linux distros), and a Plex server.

When you can’t even trust the competence of companies like Google (https://support.google.com/chrome/thread/15235262?hl=en) not to screw up your computer or well known companies like Zoom not to install an auto reinstalling backdoor in your computer (https://www.zdnet.com/article/zoom-defends-use-of-local-web-...), I’m very wary of installing anything unnecessary on my computer.

It’s not us I’m worried about - I remember getting software for my PocketPC in *.cab form from PocketGear.com some 18-19 years ago (wow...)

The problem is everyone else: the non-experts. People pay Apple and Google (indirectly) to curate and moderate their respective app-stores.

Remember how about 10-7 years ago the web was covered in ads for various DVD/video/movie conversion software? A small number of companies selling thin wrappers around ffmpeg or DirectShow (often but not always bundled with spyware or other crapware even if you paid for it) that only did one specific conversion (e.g. “DivX to H.264 Converter Pro 2009” and “WMV to MPEG-4 Converter Ultimate 2010” etc). I’d really rather not go back to those days for apps for my phone - or anyone else’s phone because then I’ll be roped into fixing people’s phones (instead of their desktops) and Apple will be there laughing all the way to the bank after they get rich selling a phone platform that’s stress-free to consumers because they moderate and curate their App Store.

Now it's ads for thin cloud service wrappers around ffmpeg and ImageMagick.

Maybe, but the app can’t install malware outside of its sandbox, access my contacts, location, or any files. Unless it does something like play a silent audio track, I can disable it from running in the background, keep it from accessing cellular data, etc.

Yet another refrain of, "but think of the casuals!"

And that's fine. But I'm sick and tired of watching power being taken away from the power users because of the masses

I would happily concede mobile if we could roll back desktop/laptop computing to Windows 2000-level utility, feature-richness, and control (without having to give up Windows itself)

> I'm deeply frustrated with Apple and Google for so forceably locking everyone into their walled gardens.

And yet the developers made the app for those platforms anyway, even though an alternative exists - the free and open web.

so its app-developers fault that they have to stick to the only 2 choices that have captured almost all of market? not the regulators fault that they allowed such monopolies to arise?

On Android there is, at least, Fdroid. All of the apps I use are from there. It's not a perfect solution, but it's definitely better than nothing.

So, computers, phones, internet, electricity? I agree to an extent, but there comes a time rolling your own is nonsensical.

Sure, but when you start building your business you'll probably do some kind of risk analysis and the risk that electricity is no longer available is catastrophic but unlikely, while the risk that Microsoft discontinues a struggling in-app ads system they built as part of their largely failed UWP initiative that they've been signalling backing away from for the last four or five years is both catastrophic and obviously going to happen. Ditto all the Facebook game companies that got eaten when that platform collapsed.

I know not every dev can afford a PM but every dev can afford to take a few minutes to do a risk document and check in with it every month or two. It seems to me there really was not a good business case for investing in Microsoft's ad platform to begin with.

A risk existing is not a reason to not start a business - nobody would start one if that was the case.

The risks taken by this solitaire company seem to have worked out. They got to earn solid revenue for several years and even with MS backing away from their ad platform, they are evidently not without other options.

I think there are three types of services/markets we depend on:

a) Well functioning markets (cars, phones, email, web hosting, computers, delivery services)

b) Well regulated markets or public services (electricity or telecom in Europe, well entrenched public data such as SEC filings, open banking in the UK)

c) Broken markets ruled by all-powerful oligopolists (app stores, online marketplaces like Amazon/eBay, game consoles, search advertising, social networks)

In terms of dependency risk it's clearly c > b > a.

Almost everything is built on a platform that you can't control, but need. Trying to build a business without would make building a business harder. You have to take into consideration what your business relies on, and what are the odds of sticks around and plan accordingly. Doesn't mean your business is irresponsible

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