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Comment by orev | Hacker News Reader

> nor am I happy that Apollo dev took his ball and went home

That’s a very unfair characterization. It’s more like he was happy to allow everyone to keep playing with his ball, but suddenly the owner of the field wanted $20 million to allow it.

That phrase is mostly used when someone is being petty, which is absolutely not the case in this situation.

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Sorry just seeing this, HN of course isn’t designed for back and forth discussion. I used the phrase intentionally because looking at the developer’s side of what happened, my takeaway is that while yes it would cost a lot to continue operating, out of the many options available to them they chose to just shut down. That’s “taking their ball and going home” in my opinion. Of course they’re free to do so, but it was far from the only option to take and they’re basically leaving a lot of Apollo fans in a lurch because they didn’t feel like putting in the effort to make a workable solution. Reddit also handled the rollout of fees poorly. All this is of course just my opinion and I don’t expect everyone to agree.

I’m curious what you think they could have done differently. They made a pretty strong case that they explored the alternatives with good intentions and open communication, and that Reddit backed them into a corner.

Unless you expect someone to go bankrupt just so their app can continue for one more month? They could either shut down now and refund everyone, or shut down in 2 months and go bankrupt trying pay the bill.

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