News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:As ‘Slither.io’ Goes Viral, Game’s Creator Scrambles to K... by arca_vorago on Saturday June 18, 2016 @04:35PM (#11930491)
"To make money, Mr. Howse relied on advertising. Players can spend $3.99 to remove ads that appear when a player loses. He doesn’t sell virtual currency or power-ups, surprising given how vital in-app purchases are to mobile gaming. Most users put up with the ads, he said."

As a person who is working on a game project on the side (that I have been neglecting recently due to time pressures), I find this double revenue model very interesting. So the game is free to play, but with ads upon death, of which he gets less than a penny.

"Those ads drop less than a penny in Mr. Howse’s pocket each time a player sees one. But with an average of 460 million fails a day"

So he is making mad revenue just off the ads, and then the percentage of players who pay add up too... all while providing an entertaining game that people like.

While I have always hated ads in game, I have a feeling this is going to be the main model for the next few years given the dominance of advertising. It saddens me that novel content creators don't get as rewarded for pure exchange of product (here is game, here is money), but I can't really say I blame them for starting to adopt this model, and to be frank it is making me reconsider my traditional approach of pay once.

Re:As ‘Slither.io’ Goes Viral, Game’s Creator Scrambles to K... by hesdeadjim on Saturday June 18, 2016 @04:54PM (#11930551)
I am 100% sure all his revenue is from ads. Every free product we've released in 7 years, including Paper Toss with 100 mil+ downloads, has made next to nothing from a "no-ads" in-app purchase. Full screen incentivized video ads however are worth a lot now with companies like Supercell spending millions a day on them.
Re:As ‘Slither.io’ Goes Viral, Game’s Creator Scrambles to K... by laydros on Saturday June 18, 2016 @05:12PM (#11930611)
I figured no one made money off the in-app purchase because so few vendors even give the option anymore.

I make a living off software development myself, and I love the "pay to remove ads" model. I play a game a while with ads to decide if I like it, then I pay a couple of bucks. It's like a demo to me. And ads drive me nuts.

Re:As ‘Slither.io’ Goes Viral, Game’s Creator Scrambles to K... by calsy on Saturday June 18, 2016 @06:31PM (#11930930)
Mobile Strike anyone?