[joeld42]

Hi, this sounds very interesting. I'd consider it as an indie dev if the DRM stuff weren't there, IMO any injectable DRM stuff is going to cause more problems than it solves, and piracy is not a huge concern anyways (it's "crappy free marketing"). Also "not changing the source code" isn't really a big selling point, if a indie dev is going to release on a new platform, making a specific build for it is not a big task. Big platforms like Steam don't require any DRM, the developer can of course still add their own.

The other problem that "pay-for-playtime" has shown to have on Apple Arcade and similar is that it penalizes "content rich" games where the player can play through rich, authored content in ten or twenty hours and instead rewards more endless mode game. Not that there's anything wrong with those types of games but this means that eventually, more meaningful games will be driven off the platform and it will be just idle games, puzzle games and farming simulators. I love those kind of games but it can make the platform feel cheap. I think a pay-per-install metric would work out a lot better in the long run for you.

I'll keep an eye on this service, definitely the more outlets an indie has the better.

[turtledragonfly]

Just curious: do you have any sources for the Apple Arcade pay-for-playtime behaviors? I understand the concept in a hand-wavy sense, just wondered if there's some real data you're referencing.

I'm working on a game myself; interested in what research is out there.

[1123581321]

The one that came to my mind was the Bloomberg report about Apple changing their Arcade approach after seeing how much better perpetual play games were at retaining subscribers. https://archive.ph/zm0Th

However, since then they started re-releasing classics that don’t necessarily have daily engagement built into the design.

[Pedro_Magna]

Interesting, most of the devs we talk to are pretty concerned about not having DRM. Same goes for implementation, they want the least amount of work possible.

You're right about penalizing smaller titles though, we're trying to figure that out at the moment. Pay per install is interesting, thanks for the suggestion!