The subscription services put hands on the mobile game, which is one of the most prolific and unexplored territories of video games.

In recent days, we attended Apple Arcade exit for iOS, with brilliant tones (such as Sayonara wild heart) and often new exclusive games (such as Shinseaki and rayman mini ) available at Launch and Google Play Pass for Android.

However, it seems that the commercial model implemented in one of these services, the Google Play Pass mentioned above, could in principle kill smaller games because it pays devs royalties according to the time that users pass there pass .

If it took you three o clock to beat the ogue of goose without title , this would probably have translated by a payment of some nickels instead of about $ 20 that you paid , Will O Neill, independent developer ( Riverbond , among the others) said on Twitter.

And even though the games of this level always report money in advance because they have the merit of attracting people to the door, it always decimates everything, he added. Independent game developers are not independent musicians. We do not tour. (…) It s not a future that finds a new balance.

This could be both an incentive for improvement in longevity, if you think that for example shinseaki is a mobile game but takes about 7 hours to be completed (although it is Capcom, far from being Indie), but also a huge limit for small teams less equipped with resources that often earn in the author s choice of the author, but because they have no money for more assets.

Xbox Game Pass apparently found a better solution in this direction, with advance payments for the titles introduced in the service every month. Let s hope that Google will reconsider this idea in the longer term and decide to seriously invest in games outside Stadia, instead of being (and legitimately) cautious about the company.

Think about it like this: if it had taken three hours to defeat the Untitled Goose game, it would probably result in a payment of some nickels rather than about $ 20.

  • Will O Neill (@wililleill) September 23, 2019