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The Subtle Developer Exodus From the Mac App Store
An anonymous reader writes: Milen Dzhumerov, a software developer for OS X and iOS, has posted a concise breakdown of the problems with the Mac App Store. He says the lack of support for trial software and upgrades drives developers away by preventing them from making a living. Forced sandboxing kills many applications before they get started, and the review system isn't helpful to anyone. Dzhumerov says all of these factors, and Apple's unwillingness to address them, are leading to the slow but steady erosion of quality software in the Mac App Store.
"The relationship between consumers and developers is symbiotic, one cannot exist without the other. If the Mac App Store is a hostile environment for developers, we are going to end up in a situation where, either software will not be supported anymore or even worse, won't be made at all. And the result is the same the other way around – if there are no consumers, businesses would go bankrupt and no software will be made. The Mac App Store can be work in ways that's beneficial to both developers and consumers alike, it doesn't have to be one or the other. If the MAS is harmful to either developers or consumers, in the long term, it will be inevitably harmful to both."
"The relationship between consumers and developers is symbiotic, one cannot exist without the other. If the Mac App Store is a hostile environment for developers, we are going to end up in a situation where, either software will not be supported anymore or even worse, won't be made at all. And the result is the same the other way around – if there are no consumers, businesses would go bankrupt and no software will be made. The Mac App Store can be work in ways that's beneficial to both developers and consumers alike, it doesn't have to be one or the other. If the MAS is harmful to either developers or consumers, in the long term, it will be inevitably harmful to both."
I know a team of developers that worked for nearly a year to create their app. They put it on the app store for a price point of $4.99. A week later they had sold five copies. The following week, three more. After a month, they had less than $100 in revenue for a year of work.
Where was their market research? Where was their marketing? Any traditional non-technology startup that forgets do do these things will fail. If you build it they won't necessarily come. One has to sell the right thing, execute well, price it right, and let people know about it. Why expect to be able to not do these things just because one is on the internet? If they didn't already know of 8 people that would buy it, why did they create that software?
We could watch Ramsey's Kitchen Nightmares and come to the conclusion that it's impossible to make money running restaurants. And indeed it's not easy. Yet there are many successful restaurants as well as many failures. The failure is always in the specifics of a particular restaurant, not the concept of restaurants.
Apps that can't be sandboxed shouldn't be allowed in the store: installation from software not signed and not from the Mac app store triggers a bunch of security hoops, which is exactly what the user should have to see to install software that doesn't exist in a sandbox. Apple's doing the right thing.
There was development before the App Store. People still sell software outside it, and in fact most of my useful software is not in the app store; I only buy little productivity utilities from the store. Office and Photoshop are killer apps that will probably never be in the store, and you don't see them suffering much.
You don't have to. Build a website. Do marketing. Sell your product however you want to, and when someone's ready to buy you can provide them with a link that opens the App Store and gives them a "Purchase" button - no need for you to mess with handling payments or fulfillment.
The App Store replaces your shopping cart and shipping desk, not your sales and marketing department.
You're special forces then? That's great! I just love your olympics!
One issue I recall was around 2011, when IAP came along, the fundamental change of apps. Before that, one would buy an app for 99 cents, and it would be playable, people would tell their friends, friends would buy it, and so on.
IAP came along and fundamentally changed the landscape from having a good game that was well engineered from start to finish to games whose sole goal is to get the player stuck so they would throw money at IAP in order to buy extra currency/lives/etc. so they could move on. Games also put deliberate bottlenecks in place where it might take 2-3 weeks to earn enough currency to get some levels, or one could pay $20 and skip that. The fact that the most popular (as in app clones) games changed from tower defense to casino slots also echos this.
People are tired of games that are "free"... but in reality may take $30 to complete. So, user apathy is causing sales to sag in app stores. Candy Crush was the first big game along these lines, but consumers are bored with stuff like that and there won't be another game in that genre which will gross even near that.
Maybe it is time for developers to actually not go for the low and easy road with IAP, but go for something playable that can get a lot of people buying it.
Same problem in the console industry and the PC game industry. DLC used to be for expansions and added levels, not must have content to play the game, or items which make the game not a grueling grind. It is no wonder why game sales are sagging across the board, regardless of platform.