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Developer Calls Amazon Appstore a 'Disaster'
An anonymous reader writes "The developer of the current #2 Top App on Android Market has written a very interesting article giving six reasons why they decided to pull their game from Amazon Appstore. From the article: 'If you are a small indie development team, or possibly even alone, don't bother with Amazon Appstore. Create a great app, publish it on Android Market, and provide great customer support. You will never succeed on Amazon Appstore without a big wallet, or at least an established reputation so that Amazon puts value behind their promises.'"
I almost wanted to stop reading after the first point the developer made. Amazon rejected his application because it used an insecure communication channel over the internet. Cry me a river. I actually applaud Amazon for doing that. But instead he goes on to whine that his server can't handle the additional load caused by using HTTPS. While I can understand his frustration based on the other points he makes, the very first one really doesn't help his case.
it seems like amazon should fire couple of guys though and hire some people with experience in mobile apps. there's a lot to see here, like being unable to comment on your app yourself without creating fake accounts.. it does seem like the store is just hastily done contract job and they hired amaterus to do the dev and customer relations. that's actually like 55% of the mobile sw stores which have existed over the years(since 2002 or so, you think apple invented this shit?). also, the amazon ceo would be wise to not let his store employees run favorites game and thus choose which games get bought, it's ridiculous that "popular games" are hand chosen, that gives enermous power(££€€€$$$) to those who pick 'em and "friendly" corruption, their personal taste and such start to affect the store way too much.
Anyway I think the appstore will succeed when Amazon unleash whatever tablet devices they're cooking up. Doubtless these devices will be locked down so that Amazon's services will be the only thing users can use. The store makes zero sense in any other context than that since I doubt even 0.01% of non Amazon devices would be bothered to manually install another marketplace app when the one they have installed by default does the job.
Wut?
Did you read the article? This guy is telling about his experiences dealing with Amazon, and explaining why he believes that small developers shouldn't bother with it, and why it's inferior to Google's offering. This is great, useful information.
I'm a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar.
No I didn't. Do you really think Amazon gives developers money every day? This campaign is run every day and ~100k download the daily free app. You really think Amazon sends out 72k to developers every day? Before the campaign was launched, I received an agreement to sign, an agreement that said revenue would be 0%.
You're saying Amazon gives away free money? I think you need to do a bit of research...
No sig today...
So he got a bad review on Amazon App store he couldn't reply to & affected sales ? I have exactly the same problem on Android Marketplace, some user didn't realise what the app did (its a Utility not a game) & posted a "Dont waste your money" review on a £0.99 app. I refunded him, but I can't respond to his comments, reply to him or have the comments withdrawn, my sales slumped after that. Android Market place is no better than Amazon on this point.
You're being a bit harsh. Maybe the tone of TFA was a bit blaming towards Amazon, but I see the article as a review of the service from a developer's point of view. If Amazon's service is crap, then that's a reason for other developers to not bother. Maybe he saved quite a few developers large headaches with his article. I'd say that this article is more useful and interesting than a similar article about iTunes would be, because iOS developers have no alternatives, so such an article would be kind of pointless.
So Slashdot motto is now "News for pandrijeczko, stuff that matters"?
There are plenty of mobile developers here, they are interested.
Dilbert RSS feed
On the other hand, there's also plenty of normal users reading Slashdot. They likely decide that this information isn't pertinent and move on to another article. Problem solved, no?
The originally Amazon "exclusive" Angry Birds 2, just made fans of the game world wide Angry. Do you know when you get an error message saying that only US customers are allowed to purchase from the Amazon app store (for some ludicrously stupid reason, given how I purchase other things from Amazon all the time). It's not when I log in. It's not when I enter my one-click details. It's not when after I click buy it directs me to download the Amazon App Store App, it's not when I install the App, It's not even when I login and search for an app again. It's only after I SPENT HALF A FUCKING HOUR getting to the stage where I could click to download Angry Birds that I got the error message.
Well a big fuck you to Amazon, and while I was heated I sent a nasty email to the developers too. Fortunately a week later things reverted and the game appeared (to the surprise of everyone) on the Market.
Using Amazon from a user perspective is also an incredible mission. I don't have any desire to ever go back there again, even if they would serve me.
If the topic at hand had been things that are of importance to a consumer of applications you might have a point.
But it wasn't. You went out of your way to point out you are not qualified or even interested enough in the topic to have an opinion. People are naturally going to discount it.
But apart from that?
4. Impossible to send refund?
5. Amazon Appstore is a disaster...
When attempting to reply to a comment, the system replied with "You must purchase products before you can post comments." (i.e. where's you dialog with your customers?)
6. What's with the price?
A short time after the above review arrived, Amazon changed the price of Apparatus to $0.99. We never discussed this change.
I still find the above compelling enough.
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
As long as no children/kittens are strangled in the product's production, what do I care how much the developer got paid for it?
How do you feel about puppies?
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
After one angry mail his app got a sprecial promotion and he got 180,000 donwloads in a single day,
180,000 free downloads - which damaged his reputation because thanks to the lack of compatibility checks it didn't actually run on many downloaders' phones.
There is a single reason not to use the Amazon app store to publish your app:
1) Customers willing to pay money living outside of the US cannot purchase from the store. I can publish my app from Australia, but I cannot purchase my own app without some circumnavigation of their block.
Task Mangler
He was warned. At least about #6: http://games.slashdot.org/story/11/04/15/0459204/Game-Developer-Group-Warns-Against-Amazon-Appstore
I'd be delighted to sell a product exactly once, if you can find a customer willing to pay the full development costs.
Everything about this story suggests that the author is an honest, underselling, competitive and straight dealer. I can't BELIEVE the fuckups here who are badmouthing him, who obviously didn't even RTFA.
I had a post prepared where I point out the problems but why reproduce TFA? Anyways I hit a stray key and it got lost. I'll try to do a decent job of a synapsis, again, anyway.
1. The review process took two weeks. He was told he would have to use HTTPS. He grumbles about server load but that isn't the point: he put the extra god damn byte in and put the app back in for review. AND WAITED ANOTHER TWO GOD DAMN WEEKS. Over an "S". Meanwhile, where in the fuck was the policy statement: "make sure your app is secure or you'll have to spend two weeks wishing we'd told you about it beforehand". Because obviously the author had no problem with the security policy; he made the change. So people applauding Amazon for their security policy ought to think about how they go about enforcing it, and whether it's worth the extra review time when they could have said to each other "oh, I have the app open right here mister author, and we'll need to type S right here in order for it to be okay to publish. Agreed?"
2. Here's the author's main point of contention as far as "costing too much": he can't write the app for every device on the market because he can't go out and buy every fucking device on the market for testing. Why, you ask, would he even want to? Why, you wonder, would he bother caring about every device on the market? Because Amazon doesn't filter. He included a manifest that says what devices to reject or accept when users come to download the app, and Amazon ignored it, letting hundreds and hundreds of people download the app -- free or otherwise (oh, yeah, they made him spend a day giving it away free in exchange for it being visible in the app store) -- and plenty were pissed when it wouldn't work or their screen was too small to see it. The author had already thought about all this, he uses a manifest through another service that properly filters the customer base. Not Amazon. So to be successful through Amazon he'd need to go out and buy all these devices, write and test the app on the devices, and then launch. He'd no doubt need to hire a household of people to aid in the effort so it wouldn't take him four years of full time work to complete. Now do you get the fucking point?
3. He's used to getting feedback email. He gets plenty of these every day. He uses it to tailor the app to the customer base's wishes. He uses it to launch bugfixes. After his "free day" that Amazon made him go through, wherein the app was downloaded 180,000 times, he got 2 emails. Despite dozens of no doubt unhappy customers. He feels that Amazon isn't doing enough to help customers contact authors.
4. Part of his business practice is to refund unhappy customers. So people saying he's some kind of greedy person need to talk a walk. Well, Amazon doesn't let you refund your product which is a major "helloooo" point for me. WTF, Amazon!
5. One customer left a really shitty review that made unjust claims about the game and was rife with paranoia. It was written by an actual paranoiac who claimed the app was "tracking" him. This review became "the most helpful" review and is now at the top of the page when you go to the app. The author was unable to comment-back to the comment. Guess why? Amazon doesn't let authors have free access to their review page. You might feel "secure" about that, but consider the liberties that users can take such as the paranoiac above. The author would have to purchase his own app in order to comment on the reviews. He can't: he's in Sweden, Amazon services only to U.S. customers. He's fucked! Amazon won't do squat about it.
6. Oh, no, that's right. Amazon did do something: they cut his price in half AGAIN. Without asking him. Now he's the author of a one-dollar app that the top "most helpful" review claims is tied to an ad service and is a tracking device (both lies) with othe
"Stratigraphically the origin of agriculture and thermonuclear destruction will appear essentially simultaneous" -- Lee
Re there being no way for publishers who can't buy to comment on the app page, I think that's an excellent idea. I am quite frustrated with all the canned mfr replies I see on sites like Newegg. On some other stores, I've seen the customer being insulted and abused in a way that would have the police coming if this was a brick-and-mortar store.
And given what this developer wrote in the TFA, this would almost certainly have been of the latter type. Calling the customer paranoid and a liar is [b]not[/b] going to increase sales, so I think the dev should be thankful that Amazon prevented him from answering.
Dear seller: [b]The customer is always right[/b]. If you can't see this from the customer's perspective, and try to work [i]with[/i] the customer to figure out why he or she drew the conclusions he did, you have no business being in business.
Yes, some reviews are going to be negative or unfair. Accept that, and make sure your app is good enough that those few negatives are overwhelmed by and drown in all the positive reviews.
But this seller can't handle this, and decides to pull the app, verbally abuse Amazon, and drop support for all the customers who got it through a promotion.
As for Amazon not vetting compatible devices, yes, it should, but [b]so should the app itself[/b]. That the app just silently crashes is bad design/coding, period.
If you need a set of minimum requirements to use it, then check those requirements at startup time, and if the device doesn't meet those, give the user a useful message.
It's also helpful, of course, if the minimum requirements are listed in the description.
Not having tried this app, I certainly don't feel any urge to do so now.
Android applications have a manifest. The manifest indicates which phones it's compatible with. The Android Market checks the manifest and only displays applications to users with compatible phones. The Amazon Appstore doesn't.
In what way is this not Amazon's fault? If you're using a part of the Android API that promises to do filtering, anything that claims to be an Amazon application repository should fulfill its part of that contract and... filter! He was doing device compatibility checks in exactly the way that the Android documentation tells developers to do.
I am a book author. I have three books published by traditional publishers, but my fourth book I published through my own company and sell it through Amazon. Yet, if one searches for the book by its exact name, the search results list fifteen other books of other names before listing mine. Clearly these results are being rigged. I don't care about "popularity" of these other titles: if someone enters the exact name of my book, my book should come up first.
Adding checks in the code just waste time and will still piss off customers who will still leave bad reviews. Specifying all the requirements in the user description will confuse most people out there and just adds clutter. People side loading apps can't leave reviews and are probably doing something illegal anyways, so there is little incentive to support them.
The Android Market already has a mechanism to filter out devices on a market level specified in the manifest file and it works. It provides an easy way for developers to deal with the fragmentation of Android without pissing off users. The failure is on Amazon for not supporting the best practices of Android.
From my read of the article, it sounds like the developer would have been perfectly reasonable. I can understand his frustration with the situation since the information was incorrect and he couldn't respond to it, but he never attacked the reviewer in his article, just said that the claims were untrue and paranoid (both accurate statements). Based on his other statements about customer service and the fact that he said repeatedly that he didn't blame the reviewer make me think your view of the developer is unwarranted.
You are ignoring the fact that Amazon was ignoring filters for devices that were not supported. He was going to get a ton of bad reviews and completely inaccurate reviews are a part of life as well. If you can not respond to reviews like this to reassure your customers that the concerns are being addressed or are an issue with the store, then your sales will tank, just like his did. I would expect that it would have failed gracefully since his manifest didn't match the device unless amazon somehow is stripping it. It sounds like he was relying on Android's in-built functionality which isn't necessarily a bad thing. He probably could do more to mitigate it, but from my experience Amazon has never been particularly good at letting vendors actually do good business.
Also, just a side point, "the customer is always right" is a bullshit statement. Good customer service should try to help the customer at all times if at all possible, but some customers will wish to abuse the vendor and so the customer isn't always right. It's an over-simplified statement designed to try to avoid losing sales because of some nit-wit CSR that doesn't understand the customer. A good CSR should be able to point out that the customer is wrong, if they can determine for sure the customer is wrong without being offensive and offer the best resolution that is fair.
AJ Henderson
It's pretty well known that Amazon has terrible pricing terms -- 20% of the list price (that you set but must be lower than the price on any other app store) or 70% of the retail price that they set however they want. You have no control over the price.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
Dear seller: [b]The customer is always right[/b].
I went through your first lines of misinterpretations of TFA, but then I stopped there. This doctrine is ridiculously outdated. If you constantly listen to the unwashed masses, you get non-sense most of the time.
And yes, that review was wrong and paranoid with far reaching consequences. Another example of an idiot who will be trusted by others. That is way too much power to leave it to a "customer" - who thinks "is always right".
Why does that concern me?
Are you an Android developer? If so, then yes, it concerns you.
If you are not an Android developer, then shut the hell up. This story is not for you.
Are you really that dumb?
It couldn't be that other people who read slashdot are in fact developers, and hence interested in such articles?