[cableshaft]

Balatro doesn't have ads but it does have achievements and game center.

As much as I'd like my game to spread as far and wide as Balatro, I understand that it won't, not anywhere close. It's just not going to have the polish that Balatro has (I don't have the time or energy, I'm in my 40s with a spouse and a day job).

But hopefully it will be fun to play (it is a more fully-featured remake of an old free web game I made many, many years ago that was played millions of times).

And games that aren't already super high quality mostly don't sell on iOS anymore, at least not before people download it for free and try them. You pretty much have to make the base game free so people will download it and then provide an unlock later.

I'm not trying to be obnoxious about ads. I'm wanting to use the Zach Gage model (Knotwords, Flipflop Solitaire, Good Sudoku, SpellTower). Some minimal ads in between matches (the matches last 5-10 minutes by themselves) and a few extras like themes or detailed stats behind a one-time unlock of a few bucks. I hate the standard model of throwing ads in your face every 30 seconds and wouldn't do that for my game.

Also another native feature that Love2D doesn't support is the iOS Haptics library. Love2D only allows for a half second vibrate at full power and it's way too much. Balatro uses the iOS native haptics library as well (it's obvious, they're very light and quick vibrations). These haptics are super common in iOS games nowadays so it will seem weird if it doesn't support them properly.

[KeplerBoy]

Sure, making money with games is hard and I guess you have to have ads unless you strike it big. I just wish mobile gaming went a different way, but that's not the world we live in.

Best of luck to you and your project.

[cableshaft]

I'm also planning to release it on Steam, and it will be an upfront cost there.

Also after paying the 'remove ads' price, which will likely be cheaper than the price I'm planning to sell it for on Steam (thinking $2.99 for mobile right now), the game will effectively become the same as the Steam version anyway.

I agree that it sucks. I wish I could just put $2.99 as the price and it would still have a chance of selling decently. One of the iOS games I made a long time ago I did exactly that (actually I priced it at $1.99). But people were also willing to pay $1-2 for Angry Bird-style mobile games by the millions back then.

Now there are so many free games on there, they seem to just skip over to the next free game instead, and maybe pay to have ads removed (my own partner does this, bounce from free game to free game, and if she likes the game she pays to remove the ads).

[aspenmayer]

Have you looked into distributing on Apple Arcade? I haven’t myself but it seems like it might be another potential source of income that doesn’t rely on ads/in-app purchases. I think Google Play has a similar game service?

[cableshaft]

From what I've heard, Apple Arcade won't even consider you for Apple Arcade unless you're already established and have made popular games in the past, and they're very selective even then. So there's probably no chance my game would be accepted for it.

This is one comment that corroborates that:

"It requires support for Mac OS and TV OS and committing to significant content updates every year for three years, at minimum. Revenue is based on how many people play your game compared to everything else on the platform.

Because of the contractual commitment and the need for marketing spend (If people don't play, you don't get paid), it's hard to recommend for a small developer without commercial experience, which is why Apple is rather particular about who they approve."[1]

[1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/dwwi87/experience_...