Monument Valley loses 5* ratings to 1* ratings for charging for additional content

Now that’s ridiculous! Monument Valley game gets new levels, but one-star reviews for charging | Apps | The Guardian

I wonder what’s going on lately. I mean usually games did cost $50+ in the good old C64 days and were probably less complex than nowadays mobile games. These guys don’t complain about the price of a burger but complain for additional content? Is f2p so common already? Maybe they should have added a $99 coins pack. lol

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Spoiled users…

Building for the mobile market is like posting on Imgur. You’re just as likely to be downvoted to oblivion as you are to be crowdsurfed to the front page.

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There’s a Gamasutra discussion about this. My comment there was:

Monument Valley (MV) is a SHORT game. Charging customers for 8 more levels, in an already short game was lazy thinking. Daniel Cook makes the argument that effort != value to the consumer and in this case, I agree. Other paths they could have taken include:

    1. Release the content free, and market like crazy! This can work (see Lars article).
    1. Release a new game! Feature by Apple, new customers, no negative reviews. Bigger portfolio!

I wonder how they’ll end up. MV was a wild success in a fickle market. To thrive, they’ll have to build a successful company, which requires just as much try;fail;improve as building a great game. Some in their shoes have made unrecoverable mistakes and some, like Vlambeers, use it to build momentum.

Gigi

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Its funny when you think of how people complain about spending a measly $3 as if that’s a huge investment.

Actually, it is if you’re a kid with your parent’s credit card. Which I wouldn’t be surprised to find comprises a disproportionate number of these types of users.

How things change, when I was growing up many moons ago it cost 25c every time you wanted to play a game lasting about 3 minutes, imagine that model now.

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Is it the amount? I think maybe it’s the deviation from what people expect. When I expect to pay $40 for a game, $20 is a bargain, and $60 is expensive. When I expect games to be free, then $2.99 for a unique 40 minute experience seems like a lot. Much as I respect Monument Valley, I didn’t purchase it. Which says a lot!

Monetization gives me headaches! So, this weekend, I released Christmas Crush - completely free, with Google Ads. The downside is minimal income. The upside is there’s no barriers to entry, no tracking of keys, and it’s much simpler to develop. It was a fun project and with it, I think I’ve now tried every possible style of monetization.

Gigi

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I don’t know, I’d actually expect some free update content before charging, personally. Maybe that’s just me. But considering the game wasn’t long to begin with, perhaps people would have responded better with a couple of free levels first.

There’s still time. Simply update with a free level.

It’s a learning process, no reason to argue and get all emotional, because clearly that is changing nothing, at all, whatsoever.

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People are much less likely to complain about non-free new content if they were satisfied with how much content they got the first time they paid.

In this case, I think very few people felt that the original game had enough content. What they had was great, there just wasn’t enough of it.

So I’m not surprised that they call it out for charging for more before they felt they got their money’s worth.

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Yeah exactly. There’s no point in fighting the public, just make it easier for them to purchase on their terms. If you fight the public you end up like fish did.

Ultimately they are minted from this game - a few million in sales is a dream scenario, so therefore the right action would have probably been to THANK the customers for their support with a free download of updates. Then a couple weeks later a paid expansion. But, learning process and we are all wiser in hindsight and all that :slight_smile:

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And goodness knows, we don’t need more of that. I think Lars Doucet has a strong approach with his free updates to Defender Quest. And then blogging about it to draw attention to his studio - to build momentum for his new release. Clever.

Gigi

I thought the game was short & was surprised at the charge for additional content. At leased release a few extra levels for free to get the juices flowing.

I think i read somewhere they had sold million units so i doubt they really care anyway.

The amount of people that bothered to rate it 1 star is pretty low anyway, seems like bad winners to me. They should have gave those levels for free and then later released a sequel.

I’d prefer more quality games like MV over the 99c shovelware and freemium games fungus that currently occupy it. Charge what you want, just quit making garbage.

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I don’t see where the developers were wrong in any way. Many people believe the users are always right. I don’t. If people do not have enough common sense to realise that paying 2.49 for a great game they really enjoyed was already a bargain then society is in worst shape than I realized. Paying another 1.49 to get double the amount of levels is very reasonable. Why would anyone expect to pay 2.49 and receive updates content for free? If they paid 25.00 I could understand but the price of a fast food meal?! Nope.

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Actually, it’s about half the cost of a fast food meal >_<

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Because those rules don’t apply to the mobile market. It’s a different market. Different rules.

Mobile has evolved to be mostly free to play, with premium offering a decent amount of content. If playing by your rules, then the port of this to console would get shot down in flames and stomped on for having too little content.

I know it sounds entitled and I am strongly against entitlement but it’s not a battle you can ever win on mobile. It’s one of the reasons I’m keen not to see free to play dominate the console or desktop markets. It would screw things up like this, and it’s irreparable.

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Yeah another reason I don’t get into the whole mobile game dev craze I guess. It seems to me like most players can’t notice or appreciate any difference in effort between a RTS game and Happy Bird.

The top paid apps (not top grossing) in the app store are 5 nights at freddys $2.99 and minecraft 6.99 so its not like people wont pay for it, they should have just raised the price to 4.99 and gave the update to existing customers for free. And Monument valley is still #6 top paid.