Hit Game Makes £52 In First Week On Windows RT

Barence writes "Great Big War Game, a popular iOS and Android app, made only £52 in its first week on Windows RT. In an angry blog post titled 'Windows RT — Born to fail,' UK-based developer Rubicon blamed Microsoft for the paltry sum and said it won't be bringing any more of its titles to the fledgling platform. It seems Microsoft refused to promote the app as it would only run on Windows RT devices. However, Microsoft quickly got in touch with Rubicon, and the post was deleted and replaced with an apologetic response saying, 'Microsoft have graciously decided work with us to iron out the problems and get us past this incident.' Rubicon will be hoping that £52 figure improves quickly, as it spent £10,000 porting the game to Windows RT."

Heard this same story over and over with indies

[MetalliQaZ]

This story certainly doesn't seem new to anyone who follows the development of indie games, especially WRT the Xbox360. Microsoft has a history of deprioritizing indie games in general, making it difficult to get promotion for titles without large publishers, and general indifference to a healthy developer ecosystem.

No surprise, then, when mobile games suffer the same fate. They seem to think that they can just copy the worst parts of Apple's model and it will just flourish...

The original blog post

[Anonymous Coward]

"Anyone who caught my previous post might already know that we recently released Great Big War Game onto Windows RT. If you're one of the teeny tiny crowd of people who just bought one of these devices, you can find one of the very small number of âoeproperâ games right here: http://apps.microsoft.com/webpdp/app/great-big-war-game/30f26b23-aa92-4fed-9273-099de3069616 [microsoft.com]

A week after release we have made the princely sum of £52 in sales. That's not a typo. And despite this, and the fact that GBWG is one of only several halfway decent launch titles, Microsoft have confirmed they will not give us any promotional features or help us with visibility in any way.

If you're familiar with their new store, this means our app is forever consigned to the garbage bin, presumably earning us less than £52 a week in future. Even if that rate is sustained, it will take just under two years before we recoup the salary paid to the guy who did the port.

Apple regularly promote our apps. Android regularly promote our apps. Even RIM (Blackberry) regularly promote our apps. We enjoy working with those companies and it's nice to see them acknowledge that we bring them some small amount of additional value to their setup. Firms our size need a bit of a leg up, and we go out of our way to show our gratitude to the above for helping us out in this way from time to time.

Microsoft on the other hand clearly do not value us at all. Even whilst there's almost nothing to promote, they will not feature our title for bizarre admin reasons. And this is whilst their store is empty and they need developers like us to fill their store far more than developers like us need them to pay us £50 a week.

Needless to say we will not be working with Microsoft again to bring any of our titles, old or new, to this platform. A snub is never a nice thing to receive, but when it's from someone who needs you more than you need them, it's doubly insulting. And it's not like we're cutting off our nose to spite our face - even small indies can live without an additional £52 a week.

If other developers get this treatment, that store is going to look might bleak for a long time to come. Please take this as a warning. I know I sound bitter and twisted and there's a reason for that - I actually am. We have wasted a lot of time, resources and money on supporting this platform and all that happened was we got spat on.

If you're not familiar with Great Big War Game, here's some reviews. Not many indie titles get accolades like this: http://www.rubicondev.com/gbwg/reviews.php [rubicondev.com] and certainly none that you'd expect a major platform holder to shun.

I hope this thing falls flat on it's face, but I do hope they don't take other developers down with them. We are fortunate enough to able to suck up the £6,000 it cost to do this port and move on, but other outfits may well not. Don't be one of them.

Here's my usual picture to end on.

http://www.rubicondev.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/bgifdhad.jpg [rubicondev.com]"

Re:No trial version

[Missing.Matter]

Of the paid apps in the US store that I can see, 45% have a trial. For games, this figure goes up to 48%. Of the top 20 apps in the Noteworthy category, 85% have a trial. Not including one is a serious misstep for this developer.