Don't let that stop you from accusing us of hating Pocket Gamer or whatever else the trend has been for the past two weeks of us posting cool stuff that goes free like we've always done.
it is - http://www.pocketgamer.co.uk/r/iPhone/Pocket+Gamer/feature.asp?c=62844 I have stayed away from getting involved, as like you say you have always given the 'Five Alarm Freebie Alert' when a good game goes free. I think that people appreciate that. I think the problem people have had, and most have not articulated it very well, is that over the past week and a half 8 games have gone free due to a promotion being run by Pocketgamer. Some of these have been reported on by yourselves, but there has been no mention (that I have seen) of it being linked to PG's promotion. It seemed a bit out of character to me, as I have seen previous articles mentioning the source of the freebie (like the Rayman game that went free when you went via another app or something). That is your decision to make, and I am grateful for the articles either way. Just my 2 cents...
To us, the news is the game is free. That's how all the stories are written. Our process for finding free games involves a complicated Rube Goldberg machine of AppShopper RSS feeds, IFTTT triggers, AppZapp notifications, and other similar stuff to find games on sale or free the instant the price change is reflected in iTunes. Why the game is free is irrelevant. There's dozens of free app promotion services out there now which are all trying to follow the Free App a Day business model. We don't focus on that either, as again, the news story is "Hey this game is free for everyone on the App Store right now," not "Wow check out AppGratis!" Typically when you source things it's because that's where the news originated from. No one can really lay claim to things that are on the App Store. When an update goes live, it's there for everyone to see, just like when a price change happens, it's there for everyone and indexed across dozens of aggregation services. The vast majority of the freebies from this particular promotion we've posted both before Pocket Gamer and before there's any kind of indication that they even have anything to do with it. In the Rayman story you mentioned, this is not the case. You had to go to Expedia to generate a code to get the game. In that instance, Expedia was very relevant to the freebie alert. In this case, Pocket Gamer is not. It's also worth mentioning we don't really post many of these freebies that require clicking through other sites because it's a lot of friction and sort of complicated. Really the only other time I can think of when we've done this is the Fruit Ninja freebie which required a weird signup thing to get a code. We don't post about the IGN ones or any of the other sites who do stuff like this for reasons I just mentioned. Once a freebie gets more complicated than "Hey download this," it seems like there's a massive drop off in the interest the story gets. So, if the purpose of sourcing a story is to essentially say "Hey here's where this news tip came from," how much sense does it make to source PocketGamer for something we posted 12+ hours earlier, when the focus of the story is simply a price change on the App Store for everyone to see? Hoplite, which as I understand it kicked the whole thing off, and neither AppAdvice or 148apps sourced Pocket Gamer either because it's not how sourcing free games on the App Store works. This is why we stopped doing our TouchArcade Free Play thing, as it's unrealistic to make demands on sites posting about a free game because you've somehow called dibs on said game going free on the App Store. No one cares, they just want their free game(s).
lol and thanks for explaining your side of the story. Before that some of us including me thought this was a low rivalry thing but now I understand, my apologies goes goes to you.
@eli thanks for taking the time to say that. I think that should give everyone a clear understanding of the way you look at these things, and it actually makes a lot of sense. I was never on the TA hates PG bandwagon, just thought it was a bit odd, but now understand
+1, as well as thanks for explaining why the TA Free Play stopped happening. I always wondered why, and now I know
Skullduggery was the pick for today. Tomorrow's freebie should be announced in the next few hours. Or just keep an eye on AppZapp or AppShopper for an unusual price drop on a well-reviewed premium game from 2014. Just follow the bread crumbs, and PG's pick will be revealed.
It better not be Muffin Knight. That game is so old that 100% of gamers already own it. It's been free a million times before
It's free already isn't it? I played it recently and it got trashed by ads. No way that is PG's pick.
The only way it's Muffin Knight is if there's a sequel coming out soon. And PG uses the same half-baked logic they used for The Journey Down. But based on what's gone free so far this week, my guess is that it'll be a better pick then Muffin Knight.
Well, there were ads that they took off with the last update or I'm just not remembering correctly. I deleted it off my phone because of it.
