Outrageous AppMobi limitation

I wrote about my suspicion about AppMobi being too greedy.

Well, I was hoping I was wrong this time but sadly I just realized I was right.

Just tried the great C2 new version with appMobi object. The orientation and locking worked perfectly.

When I went to purchase the publisher pack from appMobi I encountered the two options:

• $20 per month
• $100 per year

These are pricey but there's nothing I can do with it. It's totally legitimate to ask such prices. I was about to pay but then I saw the limitation which drove me off as far as possible.

These two paths are limited to 5 apps. Yes! only five apps per pack. If you have 6 games you'll have to pay $200 per year or $40 per month.

No one over here will pay such amount for a 5 apps/games limitation. This is beyond logic.

Am I missing something? That's $20-$48 per upload per year (not counting versions. They have unlimited versions/builds). If you have 6 apps uploaded that's $33-$80 per app per year.

Who will pay $80 for 1 upload? This is insane.

I really hope I'm missing something here and got the whole picture upside-down. If I do I'll buy a hat and eat it. Who knows maybe I'll create an app for that (and pay $80 to upload it).

I enjoy this environment and I like the co-op between C2 and appMobi but with such prices/limitation (If I got the picture right) the direction is not good news for people who can't pay $80 per upload/app/game.

This does sound quite bad. Hopefully Scirra can negotiate with AppMobi a bit? This is quite a disappointment for me. I wouldn't pay those prices for the limitation, although AppMobi sounded like a great idea to begin with.

Do you really think that's a high cost to pay? Even $200 a year for 6 apps is only about $17 a month (?10 here in the UK). I know economies vary around the world, but here I'd say thats really in the pocket money range here, or an easily affordable hobby, and that's with a whole six apps published, so halve that for 5. That's definitely comparable to the cost of a server hosting a website for your HTML5 games which you need for a lot of other publishing options like Kongregate, Facebook or Chrome Web Store games over 10mb (Dropbox and free hosts really don't cut it for hosting real games, you'll hit bandwidth limits pretty quick). So I don't think it should be any surprise - would you complain at having to pay ?10 a month to host 6 different Facebook games on a simple low-end server?

If you're making money from the apps, which hopefully will be a lot easier in the near future, then between six apps I think it's likely you'd at least make your money back!

That's one side of the question, Ashley. Though what you say is true, let me add another viewpoint.

iDevices are all the rage these days, yes? Apple charges you 100$ a year to publish for them. Microsoft also for its W7 Marketplace.

Add that to the costs from AppMobi, you can see the costs scale pretty quick. As it is now, the service provided doesn't even allow any hobbyist to create a free game to release on the Android market and start making a name for himself.

Obviously you need to invest in order to gain, but it's better to understand that most Construct users are hobbyists and that is a lot of moolah. If I wanted to make a game and publish it to 3 devices, that would be almost half month's wage in a pop.

Of course, one can reason that you can take your time and publish for different devices/systems in different times, but that only makes it harder to capitalize after the hype is gone. There's a reason games are released at the same time for different consoles.

But let's hope contenders arise, though.

I really don't mean to sound harsh, which is why I refrained from posting on this topic before, but I really want to stimulate a discussion:

If you aren't making at least $1000 per game, and you take more than a month to make a game, you should review your options. Yes, it's a hobby, but we'd also like to make money off of this, and it appears scirra is trying to cater to the professional developers as well.

Granted, we don't have things like FGL for HTML5, but that might change in the future. Monetization options like Facebook credits aren't that far off, and I believe the only reason someone hasn't made a plugin for that yet is because too few people requested it.

Really consider what you're doing for a moment. If you are spending time creating games, you're already spending money, because you're wasting time that could be going to a better paying job. If, however, you create games purely as a hobby, then you shouldn't complain too much about spending to create and/or publish them - besides, the mobile platform isn't that big on hobbyist games anyways.

If you want to go professional, and really want to make money, $150/game/year to publish is a bargain, especially considering the costs associated with creating (programming+sprites+music+SFX) and hosting the game.

I disagree, Fimbul. Not everyone wants to make the games and be rich of of them.

Or... Ashley and company can create an exporter as a plugin and sell it. ;)

If you're not making money off a game, you're losing money because of it. Nothing wrong with it, but be mindful of that fact.

I agree with Fimbul about the monetization. The lack of monetization features is one of the few weaknesses of this so wonderful game creation software.

Am I missing something?

Yes. It is extremely risky to do what appMobi does. If you want to make money you have to spend money 200 dollars is not a lot of money to start a business. The average cost to start a business about 10 - 15k. Most of the indie developers I know have spent that much on their business   to get it up and going. Game salad used to be 2k a year and is now 5k a year. Plus 6 games 200 dollars i

AppMobi has to pay the bills and you can't do that by undercharging for the service. Unless you do not live in a first world country, 33 dollars an app is really not that much. People spend more money when they go to the bar.

Again if your goal is to make money you simply have to spend money to make money. If your goal is to make awesome games for everybody. You can get a website and upload your game there.

Do you really think that's a high cost to pay? Even $200 a year for 6 apps is only about $17 a month (?10 here in the UK). I know economies vary around the world, but here I'd say thats really in the pocket money range here, or an easily affordable hobby, and that's with a whole six apps published, so halve that for 5.

If you're making money from the apps, which hopefully will be a lot easier in the near future, then between six apps I think it's likely you'd at least make your money back!

Yes, $200 a year is too expansive for me. Apple offers a publisher account for $90-$100. There's no limitation attached to it. You can create 50 apps with this account. (Or $2,000 a year in appMobi money).

I do understand why you wish to keep this "marriage" in tact but the groom is too greedy and with the 5 apps limitation you'll lose all the kids.

I'm not alone on this. 99% of the community will not pay for a 5 apps limitation.

I joined C2 cause the prices were down to earth. If C2 had limitation in the form of "One should only create 20 games, 5 office related apps and 1 music related app" I would have passed. But the limitation were logical - pay X and you're making money out of it pay Y.

C2 changed the way I work. I really love this environment and will keep working with it. It's sad watching this marriage turning into reality.

Again, beside the 5 apps silly limitation I have nothing against appMobi, I really like what they've created and the marriage looks natural not to mention the promising DirectCanvas.

I really want this to work but with the 5 app limitation I don't see more than 2 buyers which is sad.

The more logical approach would have been as follows:

• Pay 50 per year
• No #app limitation
• If you make money we'll take a share (20%?)

With such approach they will make more money, C2 won't lose potential buyers and apps will get to the holly places they deserve which will be a great showcase for C2 and appMobi.

appMobi knows which app is making money. They can tell who's the lucky (and talented) developer who's about to swim in cash. This is the guy to get the money out of which will not say no.

Currently I say no. If more people will say no (As I predict will happen) the 5 limitation will be removed. I really see this limitation as outrageous. Nothing more nothing less than outrageous.

mammoth, $200 is not the issue here. The 5 apps limitation is.

Many games/apps are released in the form of a free game/app in the form of a demo + the real game/app.

With the 5 as a limitation you get to publish 2 games/apps (2 free demos and 2 games/apps)

Does a 2 game/apps example make my point clearer?

If $200 per 6 games/apps per year is not much for you, what is? Will you agree to pat $100 per game? How about $500 per game? Do you have a limit?

I expressed my personal limit, my limit is paying for a service who counts apps/games I upload and not the money I'm making out of these. I won't go with that plan and look elsewhere.

Well nobody is forcing you to go this route. Typically game development has been expensive and it is still expensive.

How about you pay the 100 dollars a year, release 5 great games make some money and then you once you are rolling in cash you can easily pay the the other 100 dollars.

Instead of thinking that appMobi is a predator trying to steal your money, try and see them as an enabler to your success. You want to make as many friends as you can in this world it's small and word gets around fast.

I think the main point is that AppMobi's prices are aimed at people who are interested in making money off their games. For people who aren't aiming for commercial games, then yes, it is quite a lot of money. Perhaps there will eventually be a less costly option, but for the time being it's just a question of whether or not you want to pay that much for what AppMobi are offering.

Ashley the upload size for chrome is higher than 10MB(my game hosted there is 16MB).

I don't mind paying more for more features, and yes this is pocket change for anyone doing this professionally. I would also like to add that those of you not doing this professionally have really cluttered up the market places, and I feel more costs should be charged for things like android($25), chrome($5), or IOS($99). I think that to be a developer it should cost at least $1,000 each. These market places are extremely cluttered at this point making it very difficult for small time developers to make money, while making it easy for big companies to dump tons of money on ads and still be a the top of this list(which is the only place that buyers will bother looking because of all the junk there). If you want to make games for fun don't put them on the market, host them somewhere free.

Ashley if you ever work out the whole mobile thing, do all of us small time developers a favor and make it cost more(maybe its only in the business edition).

Ashley the upload size for chrome is higher than 10MB(my game hosted there is 16MB).

Shut the front door! I wanted them to up the game size. All we need is IGP and we are set for the chrome store!

Can you share a link to the game.

**EDIT. Never mind it is in your signature. Great job BTW, congrats.