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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

#201
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…

Reforming copyright length is more straightforward than trying to come up with some roundabout way to incentivize it. Angry Birds was released in 2009, 14 years ago. By its publisher's own admission, it has run the bulk of its financial value. Angry Birds should now be in the public domain, including source code that should have been escrowed as the creative work (distributed binaries are mere mechanical derivatives)…

> Reforming copyright length is more straightforward than trying to come up with some roundabout way to incentivize it.

It would seem like that naively, but we've seen that even stopping the copyright term from continually lengthening has been impossible. Making surface changes to copyright (that could easily be rolled back) will take as much or more effort than rebasing copyright on a clearer, more logical foundation that takes public benefit as a baseline. With a logical restructuring would come new arguments and slogans that might build up enough inertia to get it done.

Simply cutting back copyright length is hard to argue for, because the number you would be arguing to cut it back to is just as arbitrary as the number that the media industry would like to extend it to. Hell, I think that life of the author plus 70 years was chosen because it's biblical sounding: a biblical life is 70 years, so life plus 70 is a way of saying "children" without saying "children." For that reason, I don't think "one decade is plenty" is going to be an effective argument against life plus 70; the only thing a decade has going for it is that it's a round number and people are superstitiously attracted to round numbers.

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

#202
post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OK, so movies have gotten better at setting the mood without derailing the story's momentum.

The opposite, really: they’re relying on non-stop action and familiar franchises to keep viewers from thinking about how thin the setting is or noticing the holes in the world building.

I feel like most of the arguments against modern cinema can be boiled down to "I don't like the new superhero movies". There's worlds of modern entertainment out there that's not created by Marvel or staring the Rock.

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

#203
post #72
post #60

If it's "too popular" why would you not just increase the price to like $10? It shouldn't which way you make money, as long as you make money.

If you removed it and then re-list essentially the same game under a different name first then all the people who already own it will have to re-buy it next time they update their phone. If you just raise the price then those people who already bought it will get to keep playing for free, and that's just leaving money on the table.

If you just remove the listing, accounts who already own the game can still download the last published apk at any time - it can be found in "my apps". Even in case of free apps. In theory company can cripple the old version deliberately, but that would likely be against play store rules

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

#204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OK, so movies have gotten better at setting the mood without derailing the story's momentum.

This is strongly contradicted by how frigging long movies have gotten. Old action movies are often in the 90-120 minute range. New action movies - that are supposedly lacking that old filler - are often 3 hour slogs.

Based upon this analysis movies haven't actually gotten longer:

https://towardsdatascience.com/are-new-movies-longer-than-th...

But here again we're looking at Marvel movies and saying that's the entirety of what's being offered in cinema's these days. It's not, but it feels like it.

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

#205
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I won't play any iOS game with either ads or with a "free but micro-transaction model." If you look in the pay up front category on the app store, there are very very few games. It's too bad.

Tell me about it. I'm an iOS engineer at FAANG, but I've been shipping my own apps since 2011. It's depressing that there's no longer a market for paid, high quality, ad-free, fully packaged apps and games. I actually interned at a mobile games studio for a summer and it was made clear to me what the profit model was: pander solely to the whales, ignore the free users. Something like 70% of our revenue came from 2% o…

you're not an engineer at one of the A's (Apple) if you're shipping your own apps — the employment agreement restricts it.

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

#206
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I won't play any iOS game with either ads or with a "free but micro-transaction model." If you look in the pay up front category on the app store, there are very very few games. It's too bad.

Tell me about it. I'm an iOS engineer at FAANG, but I've been shipping my own apps since 2011. It's depressing that there's no longer a market for paid, high quality, ad-free, fully packaged apps and games. I actually interned at a mobile games studio for a summer and it was made clear to me what the profit model was: pander solely to the whales, ignore the free users. Something like 70% of our revenue came from 2% o…

That's so sad.

I had this pain with my kids a few months ago while "looking to kill some time" in the Android world. I don't play a lot of phone games and was dismayed at the crap that was out there.

I like to introduce the kids to more low-fidelity games -- I started with 2048 -- I want to say probably 5-10 different choices; all I was looking for was "lets me buy away the ads", works offline (one choice was a webview to a URL which was not cached, several were very low quality) and has a small number of features that I like (and mostly sacrificed).

I ended up buying mobile version of The Kittens Game[0]. $2.99, minimally updated[1], and worth every penny. The pollution in the market as it were, I would have spent $9.99 for it.

Your comment kind of got me thinking, though. While searching, I used a "mental sorting method" (after I found a game matching my requirements) best summarized as "price, descending" because -- in a hurry -- I equated price with quality and assumed "a more expensive game in this category is not going to have ads/be a scam." In some spaces (slot machine/casino games), I wouldn't touch an app that wasn't "upfront payment only/no ads/no tokens" or "free without ads"[2], yet would happily pay for any that worked anything like the old Xbox Texas Hold'em (without voice/any casino-style game).

[0] https://kittensgame.com/web/ (I'm sorry for those who have yet to be exposed).

[1] So my kids got hooked which meant I went down that rabbit hole, again. I'm not sure when the last update was, but many bugs mentioned in the Wiki aren't present in the mobile game.

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

#207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Games could still do this (via a single one-time "microtransaction"), and some do this. But standard microtransactions are stupidly profitable, enough to tempt most devs. And, frankly, the gaming industry at large has proven that paying up front does not prevent microtransactions. Even in mobile games.

But the pool has been poisoned already. If I see that an app uses microtransactions, I won't install that app -- so I'd never even know that the microtransaction was to purchase the game outright.

I get that. But you can preview what micro transactions are offered prior to purchasing, which is progress.

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

#208
post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that the only conclusion? There's a subset of users who are hungry for high quality applications and games. They will happily pay for substantial extensions and content upgrades. They will remember your name and see anything you release as worth considering. It's a smaller market of course but a sustainable one. In terms of video games. I'm personally not a mobile gamer though. Maybe it's quite a bit different fro…

I actually think there is a function of whales, not yet explored. Dont try to milk them with items. Make them gatekeepers. They get to decide who plays the game, who gets to enter, and who gets to stay. Sounds strange, but if they keep the thing afloat, they might aswell have a total say on that.

Wow ... That sounds like a massive power trip.

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

#209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> especially since they’re hoping for global sales On top of that, a lot of actually interesting content has the potential to cause shitstorms. Like, especially anything LGBT and women's rights won't fly in China, Russia, Arabia and lots of Asian countries. Black lead actors lead to massive shitstorms from the far-right in the USA and parts of Europe [1] - and so, producers leave all that "potentially troubling for s…

> [1] Black Panther and the 3rd Star Wars trilogy were surrounded by some of the most vile harassment campaigns I've seen, for example Or, movie studios have exaggerated the impact of (real, but not very numerous) internet trolls to protect their own egos from valid criticisms. The third Star Wars trilogy was an incoherent mess. And for reasons I still don't understand, the end of Black Panther was released in a roug…

I agree that the SW trilogy was a mess, but that does not excuse Black actors being blasted with n-bombs and other slurs on Twitter and other social media, nor does it excuse the amount of sexist comments against Daisy Ridley.

For BP, it was the same. The whine from the far-right about "who wants to see s in movies", "we're being ethnically replaced", "this is our future" etc. was unacceptable.

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

#210
I don't disagree with everyone's reactions of "they're probably making a bad game if their original with the least microtransactions is the most popular"—but there's also one key point I don't see being elevated enough: archival.

It's relatively silly that when they pull these games, there's very little way to get them back—see flappy bird, for instance. With classic game consoles, you still have the install/play media like discs and cartridges. With digital downloads, you don't—and if you do, you still need some sort of code or receipt signing to play, even if you have the binary.

That's not great—we're going to have games lost to time. Sure, maybe not Angry Birds for its cultural influence, but others? Definitely.

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