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Game developers turning off all IronSource and Unity Ads monetization

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Re: Game developers turning off all IronSource and Unity Ads monetization

#151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if a sarcastic, defensive metaphor is what you were looking for, you could've spent a few more minutes coming up with a more logically-sound one. or you could've just engaged with my points directly, without the sarcasm. if you can ONLY make art with Photoshop and completely lack any ability whatsoever to draw/paint/etc. without it, then yeah, you might not be an artist, but rather, a Photoshop-user. hopefully we agr…

An artist starts with PS, they master it can can make beautiful art with it. Then they need to use another product, or work traditionally - there'll be another learning curve but a lot of what they already learned can be reapplied. They're still an artist, even if they exclusively use PS & don't understand the minutiae of traditional art/techniques to smear charcoal until they decide to try it. A game dev starts with…

I guess I don't understand this strong desire to refer to oneself as a "game developer" completely regardless of one's level of knowledge or experience. I started off making games with RPG Maker 2000 and then later Game Maker when I was in middle school. I was most certainly developing games, but I would not have referred to myself as a "game developer", because I knew that I was using high-level tools to develop games, and I knew that I didn't know the first thing about Actual Game Development, really. later on, in high school, when I tried to use C# and libcairo to make a vector-graphics video game, I was confused as to why the game would run fine at 720p, but chug at 1080p. turns out I didn't know the first thing about what I was doing, and was doing all rendering on the CPU. embarrassing! but definitely the work of someone who was an aspiring game developer, but whom certainly would not consider himself to be a "game developer", unqualified, if asked.

why does the title matter so much to you? and why go to all these lengths to justify not learning the tiniest bit more about the craft of which you claim the title of craftsman, especially when I've gone the lengths I have to lay out exactly how straightforward it would be, and exactly what you have to gain from it?

this insistence over titles and outright refusal to learn basic principles is the sort of thing that makes me think that independent game development has become more of a fashion than a craft taken seriously.

Re: Game developers turning off all IronSource and Unity Ads monetization

#152
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it also affects legitimate gamedev studios. But yeah, I couldn't care less for the signees on this letter. Good riddance, boys; if your product can only run on ads because people won't pay for it, you know you have a shitty product. We need higher quality games in the market, not higher quantity of your chaff.

> if your product can only run on ads because people won't pay for it, you know you have a shitty product. https://www.eurogamer.net/football-manager-dev-hopes-to-stic... https://www.theguardian.com/technology/appsblog/2012/jul/23/... https://venturebeat.com/games/monument-valley-developer-only... https://www.pocketgamer.biz/news/34191/gdc-online-11-android... https://www.androidpolice.com/2010/08/26/android-piracy-b…

Nobody has abandoned PC. PC games are still around despite piracy. And for some, they are still around because of piracy. I understand your point, but I still don't buy that ads and DRM is the solution here. How come GOG even exists, according to your theory? The only games I buy are DRM-free and they're on GOG.

Re: Game developers turning off all IronSource and Unity Ads monetization

#153
post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if your product can only run on ads because people won't pay for it, you know you have a shitty product. https://www.eurogamer.net/football-manager-dev-hopes-to-stic... https://www.theguardian.com/technology/appsblog/2012/jul/23/... https://venturebeat.com/games/monument-valley-developer-only... https://www.pocketgamer.biz/news/34191/gdc-online-11-android... https://www.androidpolice.com/2010/08/26/android-piracy-b…

Nobody has abandoned PC. PC games are still around despite piracy. And for some, they are still around because of piracy. I understand your point, but I still don't buy that ads and DRM is the solution here. How come GOG even exists, according to your theory? The only games I buy are DRM-free and they're on GOG.

Of course not. Let me know when PC market gets 70+% piracy. Which mind you does happen in some regions and has caused indies some trouble.

Even then, the PC market resorts to DRM for this exact reason, so that cited 40% is still too much for some larger studios. But the difference between almost half your sales potentially going away, and a scale where 19 out of every 20 players never paid for your game is orders of magnitudes.

>How come GOG even exists, according to your theory?

Because GOG doesn't have 90% market share, and because AAA studios do in fact bypass GOG for DRM issues (until very recent times IIRC where GOG has made exceptions. Have to look that up again).

And to bring it all around: think about how Unity would affect this under it's original "plan". They can't track piracy so you will get dinged on 200k sales, even if 190k never purchased your game. At 90% piracy you'd need 2M "sales" and you'd be charged 400k dollars in runtime fees despite say, making 600k on a $3 app.

Google/Apple comes in and takes 180k and you're left 20k on your "successful" premium indie mobile game. Because piracy cost you $300k instead of maybe potentially being "free advertising" like how some people try to frame it.it was already bad but Unity showed how much worse it could be.

Re: Game developers turning off all IronSource and Unity Ads monetization

#154
post #34

If you need a Web page, to protest being at the mercy some company because of dependencies out of your control... why would you gratuitously put that Web page at a Google Docs URL (which, again, you don't control)? Even three decades ago, you could pretty easily self-host this Web page and the Web form, in a way that you controlled it. Which prompts a thought... I'm sure there are much better reasons for dependency o…

Google docs is: 1. Free. 2. Does not require any infrastructure investment. 3. Has built-in access management system. 4. Easy to collaborate in. 5. Hosted on a 3rd party that is highly unlikely to intervene. > put that Web page at a Google Docs URL (which, again, you don't control) What is the alternative? Bring up an AS, hook it up to a couple of dark fibers, and host it off your battery and solar panel? Because you…

Reasonable degree of control. Being able to put up a Web page at a domain name registered to you is just the beginning of tablestakes in this business.
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