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Guest0918231

729 karma · joined June 5, 2019

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Guest0918231··on “Apps intended for kids may not include third-party advertising or analytics”
No, I don't shut off the advertising.

1. That's my bill for hosting and bandwidth expenses. I obviously need to consider the cost of my time which is not included in that figure. The more money the site generates, the more time I invest in it. So, if it were to generate $150,000 from advertising, I wouldn't shut it off, but I'd start pulling my time out of other projects, and moving it into this community site to add more of the requested features.

2. I want to save for a rainy day. Online communities don't last forever. It would be short sighted to shut off advertising simply because this years expenses are met, and then two years from now I need to close up the site because advertising is falling short. When the site hits a rough patch, I want the savings to either push it through or pivot. Coasting on maintenance costs would be a dangerous road with an abrupt end.

Guest0918231··on “Apps intended for kids may not include third-party advertising or analytics”
I run a user-content website, and hate advertising too. But, the website costs $15,000 a year in expenses to run, and community donations bring in $3,000. Advertising generates $50,000.

I stay with safe ad categories (no drugs, alcohol, gambling, adult content, etc), and use standard display sizes. No audio ads, background ads, popups, etc. I'm sure the site could generate twice the revenue with background advertisements.

Anyway, I just wanted to give a slightly different perspective. Although I hate advertising as much as you, my site doesn't work with community donations. So, I use advertising to keep it alive, and try to draw a line somewhere I think is appropriate.

Guest0918231··on Valve has mutated from a game developer into a financial middleman
This is what I don't understand. Why not hire 100 great game developers, give them $2 million each over 4 years, and have them develop Portal 3?

We know it would sell well. What about Left 4 Dead 3? Once again, it would be an instant hit. Even if Valve develops a game that breaks even, it helps to strengthen Steam as a whole and those users go on to make purchases elsewhere on their platform.

How much money did they lose because someone else developed Fortnite? How many users started buying games at Epic instead of Steam because their first jump into PC gaming was with Fortnite at the Epic store?

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