How much money we make - hot ninja babes - business models - downloads - Sept update

Cool insight keep up the good work man

 

Thanks for the video, I found it pretty useful!

 

For reference, this is a shot from SLAYZ:



fyi Martin, your game prominently uses the character Mai Shiranui from SNK's long running King of Fighters series.

If your developer is scratching his head and saying "Maaaybe there was a problem with one of the characters", then I think someone is being coy.

Perhaps this is a risk inherent in outsourcing development to third parties, esp if the outsourcer is not connected with gaming enough to be able to recognise what is, in all fairness, a pretty blatant case of IP infringement.

 

Indeed quickly googling that character name it is obvious your dev has intentionally infringed on IP(I expect it is may even of been one of the games original images). I would check all the characters in the game and remove the game from sale. It is a pretty poor move to keep the game up with infringing IP on it.

I would also demand my money back from that dev and never work with them again.

 

Just to clarify, in the vid Martin mentions that google removed the game and he's not going to resubmit it. It was just that he would have preferred it if google had addressed his request for info on which element of his app was infringing copyright so he could have addressed the particular issue.

Would be a good idea to remove the infringing character from the iOS version though. On the US app store there's even a review from someone commenting on the fact that it's using Mai Shiranui.

 

It is also plastered all over this website.

I did find it strange google didn't say why. In cases you are in the right it doesn't give you much room to defend yourself.

 

I still hate the idea of spamming the app store with as many games as fast as you can. IMO this is whats wrong with the app store and the reason good games that people actually spend time on go unnoticed because its clogged with spam crap.

I guess cool you are making money but its too bad it has to be this way.

There is however a bit good information in there I just dont agree with the base strategy.

 

I totally agree with you Touchmint. The app store is not the place for discovery it was a few years ago. there are simply too many apps. I would guess that somewhere between 90-95% of all existing apps are shovelware. I sometimes scour Google Play for fun trying to find the most awful, stupid apps I can find (not to download them... but just to have a good laugh).

I have released some shovelware myself, however I didn't look at those games like shovelware when I was creating them. A lot of the process was me learning how to create apps. I only wrote my first line of code a few years ago so this has been a big learning process for me, from not only a business side, but also a technical side. Granted I've had a bit more success than most indies, but that success came from projects I spent 6-9 months on... not my shovelware 2-3 week projects, which always failed financially (no surprise to me either).

A lot of people think that a get rich quick scheme is the way to go. Release trash and somehow the money will come! I personally can't do this again... it just kills me from the inside. I got into creating games because I love games : plain and simple.

What really needs to happen is Apple needs to create some sort of scoring measure to weed out the shovelware, or stop accepting flappy clones and catch the apple in the bucket clones, and whatever else. I mean.... why reject fart apps if you won't reject other shovelware crap that no one gets value out of? The kids that download these crap games play them once and delete them anyhow.

In the end, the author of this post seems like a nice guy. I watched a few of his videos. I'd be curious to know why you got into this business though? Was it just to cash in on the app gold mine that "used" to exist? Understandable, but the market has changed and I think as time goes on quality will matter even more than it does now. I think it's safe to say it's best to start preparing for that day and start building high quality apps, especially as it seems you have a good foundation to do so. Plus it's much more rewarding to produce a quality product that people love and praise.

 

As Stingman said yea it looks like he is a nice guy but at the same time he looks like hes just trying to cash in because he heard games make money.


I would love to see apple charge say $50-$100 an app to publish to the store. That would weed out a lot of this crap and I would have no problem paying that if it mean there would be more visibility for works of art rather than people trying to cash in.

 

That is an awesome idea! $100/app please! Maybe do it like this... an app's rank in the search algorithm would get a boost compared to those that didn't pay the $100. Hell I'd pay $1,000+ for the right app. There are possibilities here. Another idea I had was for Apple to apply a more in-depth curation system. I thought it might be cool for Apple to rate an app based on specific criteria, like quality of the gameplay, graphics, design etc. Like they would internally rate an app on a grade scale : "A", "B", "C", etc... and have this directly affect search ranking as well. Then during updates if the developer pays a fee they can request Apple re-rates the app in hopes they will improve their grade ranking. That way the crap definitely sinks to the bottom. haha... only in my dreams!

 

I agreed with Touchmint. If lots of indie developers keep make that kind of crappy games, we might prepare the second ATARI shock which will kill us all.

Besides of it, I've learned a lot from your video. Thanks for your sharing.

 

I think paying for better ranking is a slippery slope and its already shady enough when they "pick" their featured apps so im against giving them any more power over our success. However I think a flat fee to submit any app would really stop this spamming. I think they should also go about clearing out games/apps that dont support 7.0 and higher (they no longer let you submit them so why not get rid of the old) Apps that only support 3.5 have no place on the store tbh.

And im far from a pro or top quality developer. I think everyone has to start somewhere but there is a difference between just starting out with an unpolished product and just spamming 100+ apps (most of which are reskinned clones or even the same game with a different title and keywords) so you can make 400 a week.

 

It isn't shady for them to choose who they feature. It is their store.

I agree with apps only being allowed to be sold if they kept up to a certain date.

I would also like a small fee per app and reduce the yearly fee. I would love it to be a part of google play as well.

 

The submission fee is a great idea, they should go a step further though and it should be a $100 submit fee, and $50 per year after that. Lets face it, if your game isn't making $50 per year then it shouldn't be clogging up valuable search results. There is no way in hell they are going to do this though, how many articles and press releases have you read about how many apps we have, its bragging rights.

 

Absolutely, the app stores also need to clear out all of the shovelware that isn't selling. Give em six months. If they have less than 100 downloads kick em off. If they want to they can resubmit for a $100 fee. That would take care of 99.9% of the crap on the app store and make it a better experience for users and developers. No store just lets the shelves pile up with crap that isn't selling. It makes no sense.

 

Totally agree with you but just as Rasterman says it's bragging rights for the App Stores. They like to claim they have 1 million + apps and counting... sounds great on paper and incentive for consumers. But the reality is :

We have 990,000 total garbage apps clogging this incredible digital store and about 10,000 quality apps to pick from. Unless the quality apps chart or generate significant press you will probably only discover the garbage apps. Enjoy!

It's such an interesting market. We all have ideas of how to make it better, but in the end it comes down to the fruit in Cupertino, CA.

 

Cupertino is unlikely to change anything as long as the fat cash keeps rolling in for them. I just don't know when quantity trumped quality.

Tim Cook at WWDC 2025: "WE HAVE FIVE TETRA-GIGA-BAZILLION APPZ0RS! ! !"