Comment by visarga

2 months ago

> They've toxified their own markets for short-term gains.

Both Google and Apple. If you go to the App Store all games are ad ridden to the point where you can't play more than a minute without interruption or constant nagging to buy. Where are the apps where you pay a sum agreed from the start and use the damn app without restrictions? Some games will even trick people into buying $20/week subscriptions. I can only trust Apple Arcade for my kid. What a wasteland, probably no more than 1000 decent apps in millions. And they have the nerve to pretend App Store is some curated collection of software we can trust. It's no better than "shareware" before 2000's.

Shareware at one point was really try before you buy without restrictions--even if mostly people never bought before software really didn't have trial periods etc.

"Free to play" is really awful in general though. But I guess people won't in general pay up-front for a lot of things.