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Comment by jb_briant | Hacker News Reader

As a gamedev who absolutely need to monetize its game, I think it's a great move from steam.

In-game ads are a cancer, breaking the immersion and the game flow.

That's part of why I don't wanna work on mobile gaming anymore, monetization is parasital to the experience or simply abusive thanks to the worst cognitive manipulations. https://www.deceptive.design/types

The other reason I don't want to work on mobile is the dependance (read no choice) to apple and google, see what happens to Fortnite.

On PC, you can distribute yourself and still be extremely successful (kudos to Vintage Story team).

Players prooved countless times that they will buy and even fund experiences they enjoy or are promised to enjoy (which can lead to another set of problems but it's not the topic). So I prefer to rely on gamers buying my game.

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I currently work on a B2B SaaS company (not gaming) where we have quite the interesting problem:

We want to move clients onto our cheaper plans.

The profit margin on our cheaper offerings is higher (because of licensing agreements), so we have an incentive to try to get people to cheaper plans. It is the first time where monetization-maximization efforts align with user's best interests I ever worked on.

The users who don't need the extra features need to be informed they are not using them and the ones who do use those features extensively should be left alone.

Sounds motivating to both have better margins while serving customers. It's the kind of tasks without downside: satiasfying.

Very rare to see Vintage Story mentioned in the wild. It's tied with Project Zomboid for my favorite survival game. I wish more people knew about it.

Me Big PZ player, hugely influencial reference to my creative brain!

> So I prefer to rely on gamers buying my game.

So why use "monetize" in the beginning of your post then? The term brings up IAPs, ads and deceptive subscriptions, not selling games.

First, I use Cambridge definition, which makes the usage of monetization correct. "to make money from something"

Second, not all IAP are abusive, I didn't said nor meant that.

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/monetize

I don't know about that. As an old school gamer, I notice that the second IAPs show up the design of the game changes to accomodate them, and that is always hostile to the player's time if not wallet.

I don't have any recent examples because I'm simply avoiding anything with IAPs but look at Guild Wars 2 and Path of Exile.

Even if you sell "extra content" (not game expansions) as IAPs you end up with 20 extra leaders at $5 each for Civilization, or whatever Paradox is adding to all their games.

This is true to a certain extent but like anything, the industry also has differing opinions on it. Indie developers in the "idle" gaming space have been slowly abandoning the idea of locking progression behind IAP which has been nice to see. These "games" are very unique though in that part of the entire appeal is that you don't need to do much. Rushing through an idle game as fast as possible kind of defeats the purpose. Sure, the devs will gladly sell you some in-game currency so you can unlock everything in a week instead of 4 months, but those players are the minority.

My "favorite" way to interact with a mobile game developer is an IAP that replaces optional ads. If your game has forced ads, I will not play it. I also will not play games with "optional" ads that aren't really optional in practice. For the few developers who respect my time, I'm content to throw them $5 or whatever to disable the ads when I interact with an optional part of the game, or as a thank you for not over monetizing their game when I reach the end.

That's a form of sale, if it's only one IAP.

Selling your game for money is one way of monetizing your game, out of many. Parent says they want to monetize the game, and then outlines in what ways they find it acceptable to do so. "Monetization" isn't strictly about IAPs, ads and deceptive subscriptions, although many developers seem to default to monetizing games in those ways.

To, the term 'monetization' is associated with all shady practices, except for selling the game. I can't recall the last time I heard or saw someone mention it in a that sounded positive to me.

I dunno, I've heard it in the "How the thing makes money" context for both games and startups, where a common question to someone who just built a MVP could be "How are you planning to monetize it?", even thought shady ads/practices isn't on anyones mind.

"IAPs" = in-app purchases, I think

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