Having been in the app business for several years means that I’ve received my share of negative app reviews. You know, the kind the goes “I’d give this app 0 stars if I could” or “My son got bored after 5 minutes”. Most have no substance and don’t bother me in the least. But every now and then someone manages to really get under my skin.
Earlier this year someone with the signature “outraged” left the following review on the Amazon App Store for my Balloon Pop game:
and when I re-downloaded it from the cloud I find that my little girl can’t play her favourite game properly any more because th [sic]
This is ridiculous. This game was one of the first I downloaded for my 2 year old daughter and she loves it! But that is the only reason it gets a star. It started out as free, then I removed it from my device for all of ten minutes because I was having problems downloading apps and wanted to check it wasn’t the kindle that had the problems, and when I re-downloaded it from the cloud I find that my little girl can’t play her favourite game properly any more because they have put a 99p charge on it to unlock the “full game”, which is no different from the original game!!! Charging long-time users of the app a pound to be able to keep on playing it??? How do u get away with this?? It’s disgusting considering this game is mostly played by children!! Now my daughter has gone from happily playing her favourite game to being frustrated and upset because half the balloons won’t pop as I now haven’t got the “full game”. Well I won’t be purchasing anything from you again. Disgusting.
“Disgusting”. “Ridiculous”. “How do u get away with this??”. Pretty strong language, huh?
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So I took a deep breath and sat down to craft the following response:
Hi,
When I first released the game on Amazon it was free. It had cost about $1000 to create it, in addition to 30–40 hours of my spare time — of which there isn’t much, since I have a day job and I’m a father of two girls aged 3 and 1.
After a couple of months I added some more balloons and improved the sound effects. Again, I spent my spare time making these changes. I decided to charge a dollar for the full game to try to make some money back in order to allow me to keep improving the game. Turns out some people were kind enough to purchase the full game, which was great!
A few months ago, encouraged by a handful of daily purchases, I added features to help kids with visual impairments play it (control balloon speed and size, as well as toggle the background image on or off). The parents of such kids have been very appreciative. I made these features available in both the free version and the paid version.
Later this spring I hope to add some more backgrounds, more interactivity, and maybe some new game modes. All included in the price of the full game.
Coming back to your review: I’m sorry you feel so strongly about my decision to charge a dollar for something that children such as yours really enjoy. But unless I charge for my work, or add advertisements (yuck), I can’t keep making apps or improving the ones I’ve already made.
The same holds true for all the other indie developers out there. Most of us are barely making ends meet, and many are already considering giving up altogether due to increased competition from big studios. Personally I don’t make enough from my apps to support my family, yet I’ve just quit my day job to make kids apps fulltime because I simply love doing it.
I hope that this comment has shed some light on how indie developers work, and why we need to charge money for our apps. If you can afford it, next time an app brings a big smile to the face of your kids or grandkids, don’t hesitate to buy the full version. Doesn’t matter if you suspect they’ll get bored within an hour or two — just think of it as giving a small tip to the developer for a job well done. Or, of almost equal value to us, write a short review with some kind words, or suggestions for improvements. It makes our day, it really does!
Cheers,
Per (the developer of Balloon Pop)
I sincerely hope the reviewer saw my response and felt a little less disgusted…
Per
