Every day there are fewer and fewer companies in the mobile games market that firmly adhere to the paid distribution model. Most of them have either already transferred, or are transferring their projects to the “shareware” type of monetization. However, one of the authors of Ticket to Ride claims that this is nothing more than a fashion that will soon pass.
“Facebook was the topic of everyone at GDC two or three years ago, everyone was going to develop games for Facebook,” recalls Eric Hautemont, executive director of Days of Wonder.
“Last year, it was heard from everywhere: “Android, Android, Android.” People liked him madly,” he continues.
Now, in his opinion, the industry is literally hypnotized by the fact that games distributed for free can bring a lot of money. Another thing is that this trend, Hotemond believes, has replaced the previous two. So there is no guarantee that he is worth all these delights.
“I suspect that many developers switched to the free model because they could not make money by selling their games,” adds Hotemond.
Moreover, the success of some developers in this field, in his opinion, creates a kind of smoke screen hiding those who could not make money on it.
“There are very few companies that really earn a lot of money on F2P,” Hotemond concludes, “But you just can’t see the rest of them, those who have remained at the bottom.”