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Rovio delists original Angry Birds from PlayStore because it's still too popular

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Re: Rovio delists original Angry Birds from PlayStore because it's still too popular

#171

Post by AlexandrB »

rchaud wrote: post #110

The mobile gaming landscape could have been completely different if Rovio charged a flat $10 for Angry Birds all those years ago. I'm sure they've made significantly more money by going freemium with ads, but in doing so they also poisoned the well of mobile gaming. Everything now is Pay to Win. Despite there being genuinely impressive games on mobile (Asphalt racing for one), the mechanics of how the game actually w…

I think it's unfair to put so much blame on Rovio. Apple themselves have done a lot to discourage traditional single-purchase apps and encourage IAP and subscriptions. For example, the App Store still lacks support for free trials (outside the context of subscriptions) and upgrade pricing.

Differentiation between business models is also needlessly hard. Apps that are free with most features locked behind IAP, free with ads, and free for a limited time with subscription all look the same at first glance in the App Store and there's no way to filter on business model.

Re: Rovio delists original Angry Birds from PlayStore because it's still too popular

#172

Post by shp0ngle »

cld8483 wrote: post #11

They can't compete with what they once were, so they bury the past. I suspect many industries are like this. If classic movies were played alongside new Hollywood releases, the new movies would probably be choked out. Accordingly, Disney will even restrict the availability of their old movies on DVD. They can't stand competing with their former great selves.

Disney is a WEIRD choice here. Nobody is releasing their own old movies and pushing them on all possible markets and marketing them as much as Disney does.

Re: Rovio delists original Angry Birds from PlayStore because it's still too popular

#173

Post by shp0ngle »

petepete wrote: post #9

It's almost as if when given the choice people prefer games without microtransactions, even if they're older and have fewer features/powerups etc.

Yeah but they make more money on the microtransactions in the end.

Re: Rovio delists original Angry Birds from PlayStore because it's still too popular

#174

Post by AlexandrB »

philistine wrote: post #162
justeleblanc wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not one company's decision ten years ago that shaped that whole behemoth of a market.

It is. It's just that the culprit is Apple. No demos, IAPs for free games, 70% cut on all transactions, those are the actions that shaped the overwhelming part of the mobile market into a casino-in-everything--but-name.

> casino-in-everything--but-name

Still hoping that games with "surprise mechanics"[1] get legislated into the 18+ bucket one day. That would not only keep many kids from blowing their parents' credit cards on gems but make this business model less attractive by shrinking the market.

[1] https://www.ign.com/articles/2019/06/20/ea-defends-loot-boxe...

Re: Rovio delists original Angry Birds from PlayStore because it's still too popular

#175

Post by JohnFen »

gspencley wrote: post #85
hedora wrote: post #45

We need copyright reform for cases like this. In particular, copyright infringement damages should be capped at a small multiple of lost sales. That way, when a copyrighted work goes of market (or is no longer sold at a reasonable mass-market rate), there would be no penalty for redistributing it. (Derivative works might need to be handled differently, since the above effectively invalidates the GPL, though not Apach…

I have a nuanced take on this. Say, hypothetically, that I am the creator of a song, book, video game or whatever. One day, for purely selfish reasons that I don't need others to understand, I decide that I no longer want to offer my creation to others. Do I forfeit any and all rights over something that I personally produced; that I invented, designed, fabricated and brought into existence; just because I once offer…

The reason copyright exists is not really to benefit the creators. That's just a means to an end. The purpose is to encourage the creation of the works for the public good, which is why copyright is supposed to be for a limited term and then it becomes public domain.

It's a business deal of sorts: we allow the copyright holder to have unusual and potent legal power for a limited time, in exchange for the work becoming public property when that time ends.

Re: Rovio delists original Angry Birds from PlayStore because it's still too popular

#176

Post by SketchySeaBeast »

JohnFen wrote: post #161
SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Older movies are full of filler too, but it's generally less exciting filler - looooong shots of a car driving through the countryside or plot beats that could be 1 minute stretching to 10 without having any reason to be as long as they are. Over time movies have learned to cut a lot of fat.

> Over time movies have learned to cut a lot of fat. Sometimes those scenes are fat. Poorly made movies are certainly not just a modern phenomenon. But sometimes it's critical that those scenes are as they are.

I'm not saying it's true 100% of the time, but I've noticed that older movies tend to have more fat and when they do it's more egregious.

Throughout this discussion I've realized that this whole conversation is fraught with survivorship bias - we imagine generic marvel movies or the fast and the furious stuff when we think of modern movies, but when we think of the past we really only consider the classics. We haven't yet seen what modern movies will qualify as classic.

Re: Rovio delists original Angry Birds from PlayStore because it's still too popular

#177

Post by aidenscott2016 »

codepoet80 wrote: post #34

If you've got an old HP Touchpad or Palm Pre handy, you can still get the original -- free of telemetry and micro-transactions: https://appcatalog.webosarchive.org/app/AngryBirds

My first experience of Angry Bird was on a Palm Pixi. It was challenging.

Re: Rovio delists original Angry Birds from PlayStore because it's still too popular

#178

Post by AlexandrB »

stewx wrote: post #64

Anyone remember Tap Tap Revenge? Another game that was delisted a long time ago after a period of great popularity (15 million downloads in that game series, per Wikipedia).

That was a great game and actually introduced me to several great songs. I always suspected one of the reasons they pulled it because they lost the license to the music in the game or would have to pay ongoing costs to maintain the license.

Re: Rovio delists original Angry Birds from PlayStore because it's still too popular

#179

Post by JohnFen »

Marsymars wrote: post #141
gspencley wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a nuanced take on this. Say, hypothetically, that I am the creator of a song, book, video game or whatever. One day, for purely selfish reasons that I don't need others to understand, I decide that I no longer want to offer my creation to others. Do I forfeit any and all rights over something that I personally produced; that I invented, designed, fabricated and brought into existence; just because I once offer…

I see that creator's right as existing if you never release your works to the public in the first place. If you want to benefit from the temporary state-enforced monopoly on your works, you must submit to what the state/society determines are the fair conditions in exchange for said monopoly.

Exactly this. Copyright is restricting the rights of others (specifically speech rights). It is counter to the common-sense stance that whatever you literally put into the domain of the public is public domain.

We've decided that limiting others rights for a temporary period was an acceptable price in order to encourage the creation of new works.

All of this was explicitly and energetically debated when copyright laws were being considered at all in the first place.

Re: Rovio delists original Angry Birds from PlayStore because it's still too popular

#180

Post by xeromal »

dokem wrote: post #96
cloudking wrote: post #59

That's a shame, one of the first great UX for mobile games. Nothing until that release quite matched the feeling of pulling a slingshot.

Until I read your comment I was thinking about Flappy Bird, not Angry Birds. All the comments still made sense though.

Pretty sure the creator of flappy bird contemplated suicide or something like that so he removed it pretty early on.
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