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Comment by desc | Hacker News Reader

"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?'

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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...

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

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.

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