Roblox is often cited as a prime example of a Metaverse — a game of games where people come together to enjoy various experiences because they don’t want to jump from title to title and lose all the connections. They also enjoy low-fidelity graphics and more straightforward gameplay than traditional PC and console titles.

This widely-held view of Roblox as a Metaverse is, in many ways, a narrative spun by those who view the platform from a distance — often too old to play Roblox themselves. Their perspective, though well-meaning, overlooks the nuances that set Roblox apart from the traditional concept of a Metaverse.

Roblox isn’t a sprawling digital universe akin to what science fiction has long promised; it’s something more grounded and immediately accessible. It’s a digital playground that functions more like an app store tailored to mobile devices.

Simply put, Roblox is a free-to-play Steam for phones, or, if you’re old enough, Roblox is new Newgrounds.

Allow me to elaborate.

Have you ever wondered why most Roblox playtime comes from mobile devices (78%), even though it’s available on most platforms now, including consoles? If the cross-platform and social aspects are so important, shouldn’t they also carry Roblox on other devices?

My theory is straightforward — Roblox does amazingly well on mobile devices because they all have security controls enabled by default. If you have younger kids (or siblings), you know they will often beg to use your phone or tablet to play games. Still, usually, they can’t install anything on their own — most mobile devices require a form of authentication before installing new software, even if it’s free.

Roblox circumvents that — once you allow the kids to install it, they’re free to play as many games as they want through it. It’s pretty much the same way Steam or EGS operates. Almost all games on Roblox are free to play, so there is no extra friction associated with paying for things upfront. It might not sound like a big deal, but it is, especially if you’re seven and don’t have a credit card.

The closest thing that comes to mind is Newgrounds or Kongregate, which were online portals filled with Flash games that could be played in any browser on pretty much any computer. Back then, personal computers didn’t have parental controls. However, most games still came on disks, so these sites were an easy way for many kids to play games without parental supervision, Not that the parents would mind, necessarily. It’s just removed the part where your kids nag you about a new game every day or so.

Of course, Roblox clearly breaks Apple’s own rules about stores inside the AppStore, but Apple allows it, pretending Roblox isn’t a gaming platform but an “experience” platform. That’s why I think it’ll be tough for others to replicate that — for example, Xbox Cloud doesn’t even install anything on a user’s device. Yet, Apple has been blocking it because it allows people to play different games inside a single app, precisely like Roblox does.

Why doesn’t this approach work on other platforms, though? None of them have extra security enabled by default — once you have an account, you can install free games on Xbox without any fingerprints of Face ID. It makes sense — you might lose your iPhone at the bar, but you’ll unlikely always carry a bulky home console.

And then, kids can enjoy those platforms with free and effectively free games (available through prepaid Xbox GamePass or PlayStation Plus subscription). The console platforms also come with all the social bells and whistles mobile platforms don’t have, like voice chat, user profiles, and parties.

The moment a parent sets up a home console, the kids get free reign (within the limits set by the parent), so they don’t have to settle for simpler and jankier core games on Roblox when they can play the real deal.

The free-to-play aspect still matters a lot, of course, and that’s what Fortnite and other competitors in the space are banking on. But it’s less critical if you have a subscription with your console, which many households with consoles do, even if it’s the more basic version like Xbox Game Pass Core (formerly Xbox Live Gold) or PS Plus Essentials.

I am skeptical about the perspectives of metaverse-like ecosystems on consoles, even though I am bullish about integrating user-generated content like mods, maps, and other post-launch things developed by enthusiasts and professional teams. While the paid Skyrim mods fiasco set a regrettable precedent, everyone would benefit if creators of mods could get rewarded for their hard work, as other people in the industry do.

In Fortnite, the closest Roblox competitor as of now, most people spend time in either core Epic-developed games or practice modes and custom maps for Battle Royale, with only a handful of players experimenting with more diverse experiences. Currently, Fortnite Creative is more of a mod marketplace, with fans focusing on their versions of the core experience.

While Roblox may superficially resemble a Metaverse, it functions more like a mobile-centric gaming platform, akin to an app store but unique in its offerings. It thrives not on the breadth of high-fidelity virtual worlds but on the depth of accessible, user-generated content and the simplicity of its mobile gameplay. This is not the Metaverse as traditionally envisioned, but perhaps something more pragmatic and immediately influential, especially for the younger generation.

Roblox shows an apparent demand for core games on mobile devices to the tune of several billion dollars per year, especially for social and multiplayer experiences with touch controls. We can only imagine what would happen if Steam came to iOS and Android devices, but of course, Apple and Google will fight until the bitter end to prevent it.

Roblox is not a Metaverse was originally published in Sergiy Galyonkin’s blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

In game design, the allure of metrics and data can be captivating. They offer a quantifiable glimpse into the player experience, promising insights and pathways to success. However, reliance on numbers often leads to a critical oversight — the human element of gaming. In this article, I talk about the nuanced relationship between game design and metrics, cautioning against the seductive simplicity of numbers and advocating for a more holistic approach that values player experience as much as statistical data.

This whole article could be called “Correlation doesn’t mean causation,” but that would make it a tweet.

I’m the first to advocate for collecting telemetry data from games to see what players are doing in your game, where they are struggling and succeeding, what they seem to be avoiding, and which resources they are hoarding. User interviews and playtests are great tools, too. Still, nothing gives you the feeling of being a powerful omniscient game development God as watching numbers go up and down in Grafana and Tableau.

Unfortunately, we sometimes forget all the logic and common sense by watching the game’s performance as a set of metrics and numbers. Averages are known to be misleading (both mean and median), but even dividing players into cohorts and categories can lead to self-deception.

Here is one typical example: you notice a cohort of highly engaged players spending more money on average than everyone else. Great! Let’s see what’s so different about them. Because you only have access to statistics you’re collecting and not to the actual players (plus, one-on-one interviews are messy and take time), you’ll likely sift through many metrics before finding that magical one that makes all the difference.

You might find that they play more hours per week on average than the regular player. You might discover they have more heroes, play a certain class, or have more soft currency or resources per account.

And then your first impulse might be to optimize for that metric. You probably are well-educated, and your boss might have Harvard on their resume, but when looking at numbers instead of people, it’s natural to focus on what’s in front of you.

You’ll make quests take longer, so players spend more time in the game. You will make heroes cheaper, encourage new players to start with a particular class and tune the resource drip so everyone outside of that highly engaged cohort earns more of them.

Guess what? It won’t change anything because you’re optimizing for metrics and not for people. Your best cohort probably likes your game and knows it well, so they spend more time and money and have more heroes and resources. That particular class might be a bit overpowered in high-skilled play, but it is not necessarily easy or fun to play for someone with less experience.

It’s like looking at the metrics of a regular furniture store, seeing people spend 20 minutes buying a sofa, and deciding that if we lock them in the store for an hour, they’ll purchase three!

And yes, I’m describing IKEA here, but IKEA isn’t just forcing consumers to go through a labyrinth when they shop for the sake of spending more time in the store — they are using this time to show them every cool and weirdly named item in their catalog in the best possible way. A person will not buy three sofas, but they will probably end up with an extra lamp or those funny stackable boxes.

This is also one of the reasons for our industry’s collective obsession with esports. Competitive gaming is a completely legitimate activity, but in most games, both playing in tournaments and watching them are reserved only for the most dedicated and hardcore gamers, who are, by definition, also the highest spenders. You can’t make everyone else spend more by encouraging them to watch other players compete in your title.

Some games have naturally higher rates of competitive players and esports audiences, and some have lower. It would help to understand where your game stands before starting your league. Please note that just because someone likes to compete in League of Legends and is also playing your game doesn’t mean they will want to play here competitively, too. Sometimes, even the most hardcore gamers want a chill experience. Maybe they chose to play your title in addition to LOL precisely because they want a place to relax.

You can always try to shape player behavior with in-game incentives, like “watch the tournament — get an in-game item” or “play this class — get another one”. But as I explained in my article on Battle Pass basics, trying to force people to do things they fundamentally do not enjoy will lead to higher attrition rates. Plainly speaking — if players aren’t having fun in your game, they will leave, no matter how many in-game carrots you’re dangling in front of them. Yes, you can get a short-term boost in engagement, but in live-service products, it’s always about long-term retention, which depends solely on how much players enjoy your game.

I believe in meta systems supporting, not shaping, player behavior by rewarding them for the fun activities they already do.

Ok, but what do I do if I can’t trust metrics? Well, you can and should trust metrics, you just need to think about people and not numbers when making game design decisions. Take an extra step to investigate what is happening, set up in-game surveys, invite some randomly selected players for interviews, and watch them play on Twitch (I recommend going for channels with fewer viewers because they’re closer to natural play).

Also, do not forget about player archetypes. There is no universal way to describe user behavior that would fit every game, but you can guess what kind of players enjoy yours by looking at them and then adjusting your game and its store offerings accordingly.

Often, the answer is not about changing something for the sake of the metric but about making the game more interesting for the less-engaged cohort or ensuring the store has items they want. You might find out that some of them don’t see the benefit of your Battle Pass, but they’d appreciate a shorter and more achievable engagement mechanic (like an event pass or a boost). Or they plainly don’t like any skins you’re selling and want something different.

Metrics are invaluable tools, providing key insights and guiding game development. However, they should not be the sole driver of design decisions. A successful game resonates with its players, offering engaging, enjoyable experiences that cannot always be quantified. Designers should use metrics as a compass, not a map. By blending the art of game design with the science of data analysis, we can create games that are not only statistically successful but also beloved by the players.

Don’t optimize for metrics was originally published in Sergiy Galyonkin’s blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Apple has a conundrum right now. To keep growing, they need to capture more revenue from their consumers, and gamers are a great audience for that. Apple devices have the capacity to deliver high-definition gaming but are left with mostly simpler casual titles with few exceptions.

It makes sense for their iOS devices — core gamers prefer physical controls, but it is inexcusable for Mac. Macbooks can run many modern games at decent resolutions and framerates; players choose not to use Macs for gaming, and devs are also skipping them.

Nintendo Switch is miles behind any recent iPhone in terms of raw power, but it has Nintendo games, a vibrant indie scene, and gets many AAA releases, even if they look dated on its ancient hardware.

Apple has been courting game studios for almost a decade with very little to show. Platforms only matter if they can deliver sales, so understandably, developers are skeptical of Apple’s efforts.

Platforms only matter if they can deliver sales.

It’s a question of convenience for gamers. If my super powerful laptop can only play select new titles and not most others, I will likely skip using it for gaming entirely and use a dedicated console or a gaming PC. I want to avoid guessing if the next big release will eventually come to MacOS, and I also don’t want to be treated as a second-class citizen when it comes to DLCs, updates, and mods.

Apple’s best shot at this is its Game Porting Toolkit, which can make third-party games run on Apple Silicon without much effort from the devs. Apple made it a bit complex and claims it’s intended solely for game developers, not end consumers.

Mac gaming subreddits are full of eager gamers tinkering with the Game Porting Toolkit to play their favorite games. Diablo IV was playable on Mac in mere hours after launching its beta, and so were many other titles, without any support from developers, seemingly uninterested in a relatively small market.

Apple chooses not to make the toolkit gamer-friendly and legally prevents others from doing the same. Code from CrossOver, an emulation tool for playing Windows games on Mac and Linux, was used for the Game Porting Toolkit. Still, the collaboration is seemingly a one-way street, and CrossOver doesn’t use any GPTK code.

Apple’s situation here is similar to their switch from Intel to Apple Silicon in their devices, and that transition was very graceful. Apple made Rosetta 2 a part of the Mac OS, and it would install automatically the first time a person would try to run an x86 code. Yes, some software didn’t work well, but most did, so users felt safe to leap from Intel-based devices to Apple Silicon ones without sacrificing their options.

Courting individual developers is a strategy that will not work — players want everything and will not be content with just a handful of titles, often coming later and with poor post-launch support.

If Apple is serious about making Macbooks an actual gaming platform, it must make GPTK a native user-friendly part of the Mac OS. Only then will players feel safe about playing exclusively on Mac and not sacrificing their choices. Without a critical mass of gamers, developers will never see it as a viable platform and will not bother porting their titles.

Hell, make it a part of iPad OS, too. Digital Markets Act is coming next year; might as well make the best out of it.

This way, Apple would likely miss out on lucrative App Store revenue cut from Mac games in the near future, as it would all go to Valve. However, it would ensure its viability as a gaming platform and could help Apple earn money from players in other ways. It’s very hard to monetize an audience that doesn’t use your products.

Meanwhile, even though I have ordered the newest overpowered M3 Max Macbook Pro with raytracing and other cool features, I will likely use it for gaming like I did with my current Mac — by logging into Shadow and XCloud.

Apple’s gaming problem was originally published in Sergiy Galyonkin’s blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

In the ever-evolving gaming world, Battle Passes have emerged as a transformative feature, reshaping how players engage with their favorite titles. But what lies behind this captivating monetization system?

In this article, I will guide you through my experience with Battle Passes, explain their design principles, and discuss the delicate balance between monetization and player engagement. From Dota 2’s pioneering efforts and Fortnite’s groundbreaking approach, we’ll delve into the essence of Battle Passes, uncovering their significance in today’s gaming landscape.

Tracing the roots

Battle Pass is usually associated with Fortnite, and that’s because the name was first used in Fortnite: Battle Royale. However, the core principles originally appeared in Asian games and were tied to seasonal events. Crossfire, for example, used to have significant content drops three to four times a year, usually with their separate quest lines.

Before joining Epic Games, I spent a lot of time researching the Asian approach to free-to-play games while working for Wargaming and Nival. Fortunately, some Asian publishers were happy to share their findings with us.

Fortnite’s Battle Pass was inspired by Dota 2 Compendiums, also tied to seasonal events — the linear rewards track, the fun tasks players could do in a regular game, and the accelerated scaling curve. Some of the things Dota 2 had were deemed too difficult to implement in time or against the philosophy of Fortnite.

For example, the wager system that added spice to a team-based PVP game would not work well in a last-man-standing game with 100 participants. The “Compendium” moniker was viewed as too grandiose and hard to grasp for the audience, so the team went with Battle Pass as a nod to Season Passes, which were all the rage at the time. Random rewards were also removed because there was a lot of scrutiny directed at loot boxes.

Since then, Battle Passes have started appearing in many free-to-play games and some paid titles, too! Each game treats it differently, and there is a fair amount of innovation in the space, but I would like to start with the fundamentals.

The basics

In its simplest form, a Battle Pass is a monetized set of tasks players can complete while earning rewards. Remove “monetized” from it, and you’ll get your basic rewards/unlock progression track from any game, free-to-play or not.

I believe many misunderstandings about Battle Pass come from the “monetized” part. Some people refer to Battle Passes only based on the rewards they contain and compare them across different seasons (or even different games) in terms of the item value they provide.

As you don’t judge a Zelda game based on the number of weapons a player could collect through the campaign or a Spider-Man game based on different costumes they can unlock, you shouldn’t judge a Battle Pass solely on the things it could give to the players.

Battle Pass is a monetized engagement mechanic.

At its core, a Battle Pass serves a dual purpose: enhancing player engagement and serving as a monetization strategy. While rewards are enticing, the journey and challenges truly captivate players.

Naturally, players who spend money in the game tend to retain better and play for longer — it’s the sunk cost fallacy coupled with post-purchase rationalization (“I paid for it, so I must like it”). Fortnite’s Battle Pass short-circuits this system by providing players with just enough in-game currency for completing the track so they can afford the next one without paying any extra money.

Optimize for retention

I see some developers ignoring this — either not giving players any currency or not giving them enough, so they have no choice but to spend money each season. It’s a mistake because they compromise a powerful engagement mechanic, trading retention for short-term revenue.

Never trade retention for anything.

Retention is king. Retention is how your game stays relevant through the years. Retention will keep your company afloat when you inevitably make mistakes when operating your game.

In the free-to-play space, loyalty and consistent engagement often yield more substantial long-term benefits than immediate profit. A satisfied, returning player is invaluable.

In my previous article, I mentioned that seasons provide natural points of entry (or re-entry) for players so they can start the game from scratch on par with their friends. But they also offer natural exit points unless you have a strategy to keep players that stayed with you until the end of the season. The “free” Battle Pass plus some bonus rewards for repeat purchases are designed to do just that, giving existing users a bit of a headstart and acknowledging the commitment and time they’ve put into the previous season.

If you’re worried about your users playing forever for free, you’re worried about the wrong thing.

First, it’s the whole point and promise of the free-to-play games. You want people playing your game. Even from a revenue perspective, each time a person logs into your game, it is a new opportunity for them to spend money on it. If they don’t play, they will not pay.

Second, most players who engage with your game regularly and receive a constant drip of currency will still spend it on other in-game purchases and then buy more currency because, as a general rule, people tend to spend money on things they like if you give them stuff to buy.

It’s especially true for games with consumable items, while games with durables might need to think harder about offering enough opportunities for their players to spend money (Fashion-driven economy, anyone?).

Free track

Battle Pass, as I stated earlier, is a monetized progression track. But it doesn’t have to be an exclusively paid track because the retention benefits should also apply to non-paying users. Especially to them, as every user in a free-to-play game begins like that.

One way to do this is to provide players on the free track with fewer tasks and rewards so they can still complete quests and play with their friends. With every level earned, they accumulate more and more rewards on the paid track that they could unlock at any point during the season with a purchase. I also believe this track should contain in-game currency, so after completing several seasons, a free player could eventually jump on the paid track without spending money.

A retained free player is better than a lapsed one.

They still might spend money at some point, and even if they don’t, they will not detract their friends from the game.

Quests and tasks

There is no one-size-fits-all approach to designing quests and tasks for a Battle Pass, so go wild! The clear progression track doesn’t have to be a single straight line; it could branch. Add side quests, make some of the tasks class- faction- or character-specific, and hide some on the map! Battle Pass quests should enhance user experience like quests do in a paid game. They’re not a cherry on top but an essential part of the game.

If you have the luxury of having both a monetization team and a game design team, let game designers develop the quests and let the monetization team decide how to spread them.

Quests are the heart of a Battle Pass. They should be diverse and interesting and cater to casual and hardcore gamers. If your game has multiple active modes, make sure that you have enough quests for each one, but also balance it in a way that doesn’t force players to spend too much time in the modes they don’t usually play.

One typical rule is to dish out new weekly tasks so players don’t feel overwhelmed. It also helps to prevent overachievers from burning through Battle Pass too quickly and allows latecomers to catch up.

But you don’t have to lock all your quests behind a time gate; make sure players have a steady cadence of new things to do and always have something to look forward to when they log in.

Be extra careful when designing quests for team-based competitive games. A simple “win five games as a tank” weekly quest could lead to match-making issues and social parties breaking down because everyone has to play the same class. Either give users a choice or, preferably, focus on different tasks.

Designers of games with many players in the same instance (MMORPGs but also Battle Royale-type games) should also be vigilant about their weeklies for a different reason. The results of “visit location X” could range from chaotic but fun (do you miss Tilted Towers?) to frustrating and unplayable.

And I don’t think Battle Passes could work well in UGC-centric environments like Roblox or Fortnite Creative. Each experience is a separate game with different goals and design objectives. Developing a coherent series of tasks players could complete in such a diverse and constantly evolving environment would be extremely difficult, if not impossible.

Social play

If your game allows for social play, Battle Pass can be a great tool in encouraging players to team up and spend money.

The most apparent benefit for the players is completing the same quests together. In an MMO/BR game, it leads to higher chances of success, and it’s also just more fun to do things with friends.

Designers should avoid getting players into a situation where they must compete against their teammates for a resource to complete a quest. Say, if you’re tasking players with killing a monster and then delivering its head to a village elder, give everyone participating in the kill a copy of the head (or, maybe, go with a limb if the monster only has one head) — this way you will not force groups to do the quest multiple times, and will also encourage people teaming up near the monster to take it down together.

Forcing players to play as a team to complete quests is never a great idea because it will feel punishing for solo players or for people playing at odd hours when their friends aren’t online. But if the game allows for interactions with other solo players, teaming up on the spot to complete a task could lead to new social connections, which is always great.

For team-based competitive games, go with team-dependent tasks instead of solo tasks to make them easier to complete and encourage social play. Say, instead of “get five headshots in a game with a specific character,” you could ask players to be part of a team that lands the same result, even if they’re playing a support character.

Completion rates

Every reasonably engaged player should complete the Battle Pass by the end of the season.

What is “reasonably engaged” depends on the game. As a starting point, I’d look at the lower bound (say, 25th percentile) of the 14-day retained cohort and go from there. If 25% of users who keep playing after 14 days spend less than two hours per week in your game, then two hours per week is what it should take for an average person to complete the Battle Pass.

This way, you’re making the progression track approachable to everyone and, hopefully, nudging the players at risk of lapsing from the game into the more healthy engagement zone. Of course, playing two hours per week does not guarantee they will not leave, but it increases their chances of staying.

Side note: use data from actual players to adjust this after your game launches. Data from closed beta tests usually paints a rosier picture because they tend to attract more engaged players.

Catch-up mechanic

Battle Pass tasks usually drop in weekly batches with semi-randomly generated dailies. It makes the task list less daunting and, if designed correctly, allows latecomers to catch up to their friends by completing tasks from several weeks simultaneously.

Say, a quest from week one might ask users to visit a particular location, and another quest in week seven could encourage them to kill a monster that usually spawns in the same spot. This way, users playing from week one will have to play at least two games to complete both tasks, but a user who joined on week seven could finish them in one.

It is also great for users who lapsed from a game during mid-season for whatever reason — they don’t have to wait until the next season to jump back in, and if they paid for the Battle Pass, they will not lose out on any rewards.

Players have lives outside your game; always respect that.

There is usually a way to buy Battle Pass levels, but you should avoid mistaking it for a catch-up mechanic — it is mostly there, so people with extra income to spend could get the last reward in the Battle Pass earlier. It’s that elusive “$100 skin” for high spenders that anyone could eventually get.

However, selling Battle Pass levels at a discount price by the end of the season is a valid way to make some money or to, at least, get players to spend some of their earned in-game currency.

End-of-the-season fatigue

As the season progresses, it’s crucial to keep the gameplay fresh and engaging, a challenge developers must continually address to retain players. Some of them will get tired by the end of the season as tasks add up, and the game stays the same.

Given the weekly nature of Battle Passes, many of the players will still have more quests to complete. But people who paid for extra levels to get to the last reward on the track or players who spent a lot of time in the game might have no more rewards to unlock, making them feel like they’re wasting their time. It is a good idea to come up with either end-of-the-season challenges or end-of-the-pass rewards — like a consumable or a random item repeating every several levels after the last one.

It’s a delicate balance. On the one hand, you want to avoid putting extra pressure on already engaged players to spend even more time in the game — at some point, it will stop being fun for them, and they might leave. On the other hand, your most dedicated users might feel bored because they’re not challenged or not rewarded enough. If your game has a competitive aspect with separate rewards, nudging some of them into that game mode could work, but many games don’t have that.

Remember other tools, too — in a seasons-based game you can persuade players to stay for the next one with story beats or content drops, like teasing and adding new characters, weapons, or mechanics.

Battle Passes don’t have to be tied to seasons if your game doesn’t have them. But having clear starting and end dates with weekly beats helps create a virtuous cycle of guiding players from one Battle Pass to another. If resources are limited, you could reserve Battle Passes just for special events in your game.

Rewards

While I talk a lot about the quests being the most crucial thing in a Battle Pass, rewards are essential, too — especially the first and the last rewards on the track. If your Battle Pass sells an upgraded version with several tiers included, then what gets unlocked there is also super valuable.

The first-time buyer will look at the value of rewards in the Battle Pass, especially on those three, before deciding to purchase it. They will also be a bit cynical about it. Some will assume they will only finish part of it, so the first several rewards better be worth their money. The same goes for the upgraded version — if it’s $15 more but gives $60 worth of stuff immediately, people with extra cash will likely choose it.

Suppose your game has both durable and consumable items — great! Only three items mentioned above have to be durables (or high-value consumables if you don’t have durable items); everything else could be lower-tier content because it will not change purchasing decisions as much.

It’s absolutely fine to let people purchase the extra levels, even at the beginning. From the pure revenue standpoint, it allows you to earn money from people willing to pay more to wear the trendiest outfit of the season immediately. And it gives some players a sense of security — they can still catch up and earn all of the rewards even if real life gets in the way, and they won’t be able to play as much as they hoped.

Of course, if you balance the Battle Pass to be on the challenging side, players might find it predatory and skip the next one. They might even leave the game because it will feel less fun without a Battle Pass.

Because a Battle Pass is an engagement mechanic, I would go all-in on its value to make it as enticing to players as possible. Your game will probably have special conversion offers for new users. Still, in my experience, Battle Pass works great for this purpose because it combines elements of all three monetization pillars and offers incredible value when designed correctly.

You want as many players buying Battle Pass as possible, so don’t go cheap on its rewards.

Your players will first want the Battle Pass for the rewards, and you will want them to have it for engagement and post-purchase rationalization, making them more likely to stick around in your game. That’s why giving away the paid track of your Battle Pass for free will not work as well as selling it — if players didn’t spend money or effort to get it, they will be less likely to value it and engage with it.

One more thing about the last reward in the Battle Pass. By the time most players get to that, they will perceive it as earned and not paid because they had put many hours into the game to unlock it. They will wear it with pride! Selling it later in the store would be a terrible idea, diminishing its value. Reskinned versions of the outfit model are fair if they look different enough. You don’t want your game get bloated with assets nobody can obtain anymore.

***

The allure of Battle Passes is not just about in-game rewards; it’s an intricate dance of user engagement, exciting challenges, and player satisfaction. Battle Passes are more than a monetization strategy — a commitment from developers to players, promising a continued stream of new and exciting things to do.

Designing and maintaining live games is always challenging, and a seasonal approach to them allows for a structured way to keep players engaged and the development process predictable.

Battle Pass fundamentals was originally published in Sergiy Galyonkin’s blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

This article describes my way of thinking about monetization. It is not a guide to monetizing your free-to-play game, but this approach is helpful when analyzing other products and developing a strategy for a title.

This is the model I’ve used since working at Wargaming (even before Epic Games) — so depending on how you look at it, it’s either outdated or has stood the test of time.

Three pillars

In my monetization framework, I categorize items and mechanics into three pillars:

• Social — things that affect the experience of playing with others. Player-driven marketplaces, party/server boosts, emotes, and anything else a person could share with friends.
• Utility — gameplay affecting items and mechanics that make the game more convenient, deeper, and different. Extra inventory slots, timer skips, new characters/heroes, quests, battle passes, etc.
• Vanity — anything that makes the user stand out: cosmetic items, ranked rewards, badges, achievements, and so on.

You can use the “SUV” mnemonic to remember them.

Many items and monetization strategies will likely incorporate two or three pillars — that’s great! You want one item to attract as many users as possible so you can simplify your offers and keep the game’s monetization transparent and fair.

Yes, there are specific types of games that are based around complexity, and they tend to attract players who enjoy min-maxing both in the game itself and the game’s store, but outside of them, most players want to have fun and not overthink choosing the right offer. Don’t make your title’s monetization strategy look like health insurance packages in the US.

Social

Let’s begin with the most under-utilized pillar of all three, social, is what changes the experience of playing together or versus other people. In some sense, you could consider vanity items social, too — after all, if nobody sees your cool skin or achievements page, do they even matter?

An obvious (and difficult to implement) example is a player-driven marketplace or economy. If players can buy and sell certain items for real money (or hard currency), it will affect their perception of value and time spent obtaining them, not always positively. Say, if a particular resource needed to level up skills costs $1 or requires two hours of gameplay, some might feel they would be better off paying for it, even though it means skipping two hours of the game they like enough to spend money on it.

And then there is EVE Online, which thrives on having a player-driven economy, politics, wars, and everything else.

Even when it is one step removed through an intermediary currency, introducing money often breaks the perception of the earned item’s value because it’s suddenly compared not against the in-game counterparts but with a cup of coffee or a burger in the real world. You want your players to have fun playing the game and not feel like they’re working a sub-minimum wage job.

Emotes are a big social category — while they allow for self-expression and could count as vanity items, they’re often used to communicate with other players, especially on the enemy team. Players emote almost exclusively when others can see them, and in some games, it’s even customary to answer with the same or similar emote. Fortnite uses it well with their synced emotes.

Emotes also tie incredibly well into the TikTok and Instagram Reels-driven zeitgeist, allowing users to express even complex emotions using dances and gestures from popular media and influencers. If you’re Internet-old, consider emotes as GIFs for the new generation.

There are also boosts, which aren’t as popular in Western games as they are in Asian. One typical example is team boosts (like in League of Legends Wild Rift) that give everyone 10% more XP and soft currency in case the team wins. They usually can be combined (but not stacked), too. But these boosts matter more in progression-based games. Asian games sometimes have server boosts attached to player skins or weapons, so a person with a flashy gun in a first-person shooter game would grant extra XP to their teammates and enemies.

And, of course, I can’t skip over battle passes and event tickets, often being great social monetization tools. If all of your party is doing a battle pass quest, you will be way more likely to purchase the battle pass, so you don’t miss out. You could do everything they’re doing and still have a lot of fun without it, but having a checkbox to tick and a potential reward to earn usually makes the battle pass worth it.

The weekly structure of most battle passes is great for social engagement and re-engagement, too — there is a lower risk of a person who plays less often than everyone else falling behind their friends. And sometimes a battle pass might be designed in a way that hurts social engagement — if the weekly quest in your game is to play support, it’s more likely to break up friend groups than to help them stay together.

Utility

Items and mechanics that affect how a game is played belong to this pillar — from making progress faster to additional quests in battle passes to overpowered pay-to-win items and mechanics.

I don’t need to tell you that pay-to-win mechanics, especially in competitive games, are a terrible idea — players generally hate them, and they tend to hurt long-term retention for most cohorts.

Progression-based games (many mobile titles fall into this group) often get away with charging their audience for gameplay-affecting items. While their players are usually OK with that, there is always a risk of turning a free-to-play game into pay-to-play, negating the core benefits of the business model. This applies to monetized maintenance mechanics like durability or repair costs, too.

There is nothing inherently wrong with pay-to-play free games — many TCGs become like that once you reach a certain rank. But it comes at the cost of lower conversions.

Some of the most apparent utility-based monetization strategies are new characters, cards, extra storage slots, shorter timers, XP boosts, and special items. Many gacha-style games contain utility items like heroes, cards, or resources needed for upgrades in their loot boxes. But a battle pass can also belong to this pillar, depending on how many extra activities it provides to the players.

A typical battle pass usually has a list of tasks players must complete to level it up. While the rewards for completing those tasks are the most obvious benefit, the tasks themselves can be a big reason for increased player satisfaction and retention. And because they tend to restart from scratch every few months, battle pass-driven seasons provide natural points of re-entry for lapsed players.

Well-designed quests will have users going slightly out of their comfort zone, doing things they would not typically perform — like visiting a high-risk, high-reward location on the map or completing a series of challenges with a different character class.

It is a delicate balance — make the tasks too aligned with regular gameplay, and users will feel like nothing has changed. But making them too different might force players to do things they hate, hurting satisfaction and retention. This might be particularly harmful in competitive games, where these actions affect their teammates, leading to players hating anyone trying to complete their weeklies.

Of course, rewards in a battle pass are also a big part of its appeal to players, and that’s what most companies advertise when promoting it, which brings us to the next pillar.

Vanity

Anything that allows your players to express themselves and stand out. Traditional cosmetic items and customization options are a big part of this pillar, but it includes other things.

For example, free-to-play games often include hard-to-get cosmetic items that require a certain amount of playtime or skill — think about the last skin in a battle pass or an unlockable modification of that skin that requires the player to grind quite a bit. Tournament and competitive seasonal rewards (like trails and special effects for spells in League of Legends Wild Rift) also belong to this pillar.

Overall, vanity is about expressing one’s creativity, style, dedication, and skill. You’d want the flashiest items for the first two, especially if they’re directly monetized. Fun, expressive skins that make a user stand out work well for direct or layered purchases. The same goes for anything tied to an external IP, allowing users to express their love for a particular movie, anime, or show.

But if you’re considering items to showcase dedication and skill, understated and subdued cosmetics often work better and contrast the grandeur and kitsch of directly paid items. For years, Fortnite’s two most intimidating outfits were a simple knight in black armor and a bearded guy in a suit — not a walking banana or a toon-shaded cat bodybuilder. And that’s because those were harder to get, so players naturally (and rightfully) assumed that anyone wearing them had played the game for quite some time.

Scarcity is a big part of the appeal for vanity items. The easiest way to achieve scarcity in free-to-play games is to control the window when an item can be acquired through rotating store inventory, time-limited events, and passes.

Loot boxes are another way to make items artificially scarce (Overwatch used to do that), but they tend to feel punishing and exploitative. Some games try to control the supply by limiting the quantity of each item available for purchase. I have yet to see an example of this working without leading to player frustration and the perception that the game is tilted toward high spenders, although it seems more accepted in some regions than others.

In Western PC and console games, vanity is the most apparent and well-known pillar, and most players are comfortable with this type of monetization.

When developing vanity-based items, remember the gameplay aspect instead of focusing purely on paid cosmetics. Players value earned cosmetics a lot, and anything they had to work for is considered earned, even if there was an initial purchase — like a battle pass, an event ticket, or even an original item they get to level up.

When done right, vanity-based cosmetics will increase the game’s revenue, make it more fun for the players, and improve game satisfaction and retention.

But what about other things?

You might have noticed that I mostly talked about in-game mechanics and items without mentioning conversion strategies like special offers or introductory daily drops. I also haven’t spent any time on loot crates or subscriptions.

That’s because they are, while important, delivery mechanisms for what your players want from the game. You might sell your skins (heroes, emotes, resources) in the permanent or time-limited (or even access-restricted) store; put them into loot crates or behind a subscription. But what you sell and what you monetize is most important. A game that sells power-ups outright will continue being pay-to-win if those power-ups are now locked in limited drops or are part of a monthly subscription tier.

Not to say that the special offers, events, or other sales tactics don’t matter — they do and matter a lot. But when analyzing a game, I prefer to start with understanding what it sells before proceeding to how it does it. Sale strategies warrant a separate article.

***

Let me know if you find this helpful by commenting here or on social media, and also tell me what you would like me to write about next.

Three pillars of free-to-play monetization was originally published in Sergiy Galyonkin’s blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

But first, I’d love to start with something less serious to see if this account still works. You might have seen this story already on my BlueSky or Twitter. so — my apologies.

The Murder Cake Mystery

It was an average Friday, the 13th. The Epic Games Store team was busy shipping Borderlands 3, which turned out to be one of the year’s biggest games, amidst very vocal criticism and even threats from concerned gamers.

Right around lunch, a person from the reception desk delivered a gift for the store team that became suspicious the more we looked at it — a cake.

It had no card. It wasn’t addressed to anyone, not even the store team — just to Epic. It was anonymous. It had the text “Congrats on the Boarderlands 3 Release!”. That’s right, “Boarderlands”, in a font clearly not approved by anyone even remotely related to Borderlands 3. Also, “Congrats”.

It reminded me of a Ukrainian funeral cake.

We ran downstairs to catch the delivery person. He just shrugged — it was from a bakery, and he had no idea who ordered it. Our BizDev team pinged folks at Take-Two — they haven’t heard anything about the cake and were very busy working on the game’s launch, thank you.

Our contact at Gearbox said the same thing but with more passion.

We joked about calling the police or the bomb squad. We looked at each other — smiling but visibly unsettled. Everyone was hungry, and the cake looked delicious. It was so moist you could feel it even without cutting a piece. Its smell was magnificent.

I decided that I was trying to lose weight. A person beside me chuckled nervously and told everyone they were not hungry. Someone threw around the Murder Cake moniker, and it stuck.

People from other rooms that were less critical to our company’s survival were invited for the launch celebration and cake, but upon hearing its story, turned out not to be very hungry either. A surprising number of them were dieting, too.

Time passed. We tried to keep working without glancing at the cake as it sat in the middle of the room. Everything smelled like chocolate and vanilla.

Two hours in, Chris Donahue, Take-Two’s account manager and the team’s most experienced biz dev person, stood up, a knife in his hand. “Tell my family I love them,” he quipped as he cut a piece and quickly ate it. We had no time to stop him.

No one followed his example. We asked if his decision was motivated by smell, and he said it was, but we knew he was taking one for the team. So we watched him for another hour.

As Chris wasn’t dying, he was getting increasingly relaxed, and we joked about the whole ordeal, coming up with theories about who could have sent us this abomination. Everyone laughed about the stupid thing, but no one else took a bite.

Two more hours later, we decided it was too late to save Chris, and we might as well follow him, so we all ate the damn cake.

It was delicious.

The Murder Cake Mystery was originally published in Sergiy Galyonkin’s blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

After multiple websites reported that Steam Spy is dead, I think it is time to discuss what is actually going on.

What happened?

As you might know, on 11th of April, 2018 Valve has made changes to their Steam Web API, removing owned games from user’s information, unless they actively opt-in.

Many people, myself included, at first attributed that change to GDPR compliance, but it doesn’t seem to be the case. Valve still exposes your real name, achievements, groups, screenshots, and friends by default and still hasn’t updated their EULA to comply with GDPR. It doesn’t mean they won’t, but the API change was definitely not caused by that.

Steam Spy used to rely on polling user information through that API. Naturally, the old algorithm stopped working, and while I was busy creating a new one, some press rushed to pronounce the site dead.

To make matters worse, Steam also changed their Store API, making it useless. Store API contained basic information about games on Steam — prices, release dates, genres and so on. Steam Spy (as many other sites) relied on that as well. Like the previous change, this one wasn’t caused by GDPR compliance either — it’s hard to imagine Valve protecting the store’s privacy.

What did Valve say?

Nothing, as usual.

I wrote a proposal to Valve that would still let Steam Spy run using the old algorithm without exposing any personal data. I’ve got a confirmation from Tom Giardino that they’ve received my message, but that was it.

To be honest, that was already more than they ever said to me before.

Why keep it running?

To coincide with these two blows from Valve, we experienced some major workload at my day job. The game I’m working on was down for an extended period of time, and I didn’t have time to work on Steam Spy.

However, during that period I received over two hundred emails and messages from developers telling me how Steam Spy improved their lives. There was an indie company from Berlin that managed to secure financing from the government for their niche title because they had the data to prove that this niche is big enough. The title got released and succeeded.

Then there was a successful mid-sized publisher that entered the business after it was able to see which games are selling and which don’t.

And then there were your usual stories of developers being able to navigate the space because they knew how the market behaves now.

So, after a very stressful week at my day job I decided to try a couple of new things with Steam Spy.

How does Steam Spy work now?

In my previous life almost 15 years ago I was writing a Ph.D. thesis on predicting economic outcomes based on accidental data that might be irrelevant to the predicted results using machine learning.

The trick with machine learning algorithms is they’re fantastic at solving categorization problems (“Is this a man or a cat?”) but suck at regression problems (“Product A sold 10,000 copies, B — 20,000, how much did C sell?”). The idea is that a specially prepared data with a modified algorithm can work a bit better for problems like that.

I never finished that Ph.D. (was poor as a church mouse and couldn’t afford that), but now with the recent changes to Steam API, I decided to give it a try. Thanks to the power of the Internet, I have a ton of coincidental data on games, and most of it doesn’t come from Steam.

Well, guess what, it kinda works!

Frostpunk devs just announced that the game sold 250,000 copies and the new algorithm estimated it at 252,000 copies. Pretty close, right?

Does everything work like before?

Unfortunately, no.

I’m still rewriting the site to move to the new math model. Many features of the site are still unavailable, but most of them will be coming back.
For example, I’ve temporarily removed country stats. I wasn’t happy with them before, and now is a good chance to rework it into something more usable.

On the other hand, the basic features (the number of owners, playtime distribution, related games) are working fine already. API is also back, although in a somewhat limited form.

How accurate is the new Steam Spy?

Not very accurate, to be honest.

I have the data for around 70 games from different developers, and for 90% of them, the new Steam Spy is within 10% margin of error. But I also saw some crazy outliers, where the difference between the estimates and the real data could be fivefold.

What’s with the new access rights?

You might’ve noticed that Steam Spy now displays the number of owners as a range and doesn’t display any graphs to the general audience. Patreon backers still have the access to more precise estimates and the graphs, like before.

I did that because I’m still not entirely happy with my new algorithm and its precision, and also because a lot of things on Steam Spy are still broken. I do believe in giving everyone the access to the essential information, but until I fix everything, Steam Spy will be semi-closed to the general audience.

What’s next?

I will keep on iterating the new algorithm while slowly bringing back the core functions of Steam Spy.

It will take some time and it’s still possible that Valve will make another move to shut down the service, but until that happens, Steam Spy will continue to operate.

What’s going on with Steam Spy? was originally published in Sergiy Galyonkin’s blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

How Steam Direct, PUBG and the rise of China affected the biggest PC gaming marketplace in 2017.

The following article is based on the presentation I gave at GDC 2018. The data was gathered during February 2018 and by now is probably slightly outdated.

Obligatory Fine Print

Steam Spy only tracks owners and players, not sales. Steam Spy doesn’t track DLCs or MTXs.

It’s impossible to distinguish between games sold on Steam, sold elsewhere and given away for free. For the purposes of this article we’re measuring the market Steam controls, not the sales coming directly through Steam.

Steam Spy uses 98% confidence range and is very inaccurate for small games, especially the ones below 30K owners.

Geography on Steam Spy relies on self-reported data. Only engaged users fill out the country field in their profiles, therefore the geo-data is inevitably skewed.

Steam Spy tracks users playing games, not idling in the Steam client or botting trading cards.

Steam Spy is very inaccurate as a method of tracking refunds. I do have a small sample of data on refunds from a dozen of developers, but I don’t feel confident about it to include it here.

The site uses 3-day samplings. For this article I used a 10-day sampling, so it’s a bit more accurate than the site.

Steam Spy only uses public profiles to gather and estimate the data. 99.9% profiles on Steam are public.

Steam Spy is always lagging by at least 4 days, and is completely inaccurate for new titles.

The market

2017 was the best year for Valve so far. Every single metric you can imagine grew: the overall number of games sold, the audience, the total revenue and so on.

Add f2p titles and in-app purchases to this number and you’re looking at the total number well over $5B. Of course, not all of this revenue comes through Valve, a sizable portion of sales happens through 3rd-party sites and even in retail. The size of the market controlled by a single private company is still amazing.

By the end of 2017, Steam had 291M that have played at least one game at least once. 22% of them joined in 2017, so if you were worried that Steam only appeals to the aging core demographics — it’s not. We don’t know the age distribution for sure, Steam has been adding more and more new users every year and is far from slowing down.

57M people played anything on Steam in the last two weeks. Steam is smaller than some single games (like Minecraft or League of Legends) but it’s certainly huge nevertheless.

Steam’s retention is nothing but amazing. There are no other games that can show the same retention over the years. That’s, of course, because Steam is a hardware-agnostic store and should be compared to Amazon or eBay, not to conventional videogames or even gaming platforms.

The slight decline in the user retention on Steam in the past years could be attributed to the huge amount of new players joining.

New players are buying less games than the old ones, especially with the majority of them joining from developing countries like China or Philippines. Though 1 as a median number of owned games might seem low, it should be noted that if the players retain and continue using Steam, they’re likely to buy more.

While 15 as a median number of games for users that have joined in 2003 might look high, it translates to only one game per year. Not exactly extraordinary or even surprising.

Games

Newsflash: Steam has a lot of games. But you know this, right?

Steam sales are skewed to the top with just 100 games (0.5% of all) accounting for 50% of total revenue. It’s probably even more skewed if we add in-app purchases and free-to-play titles.

The top 20 list doesn’t look so surprising. PUBG, being the behemoth it is, took home cool $600M in sales (again, not counting in-app purchases). It’s also nice to see a bunch of indie titles on the list — Divinity: Original Sin 2, ARK, Rocket League and fans-favorite Cuphead.

If you just look at the top 20 games, the situation hasn’t changed much. A game still has to make $22M to break into the top 20. So, why all the gloom and doom about the indiepocalypse?

Because while top games are safe, it’s not so pretty for the rest of them.

When I wrote my first article about Steam three years ago, a median game had 32K owners.

The pricing situation is also becoming more and more unhealthy and reminds the pre-iOS 11 App Store. The race to zero is on.

Although, a lot of this could be attributed to the sheer amount of new games released. Counting medians and averages is starting to lose its meaning, so I checked top 500, top 1000 and top 2000 games on Steam instead. In all of the brackets there is a slight year-over-year decline, but it’s insignificant, really — from 3% to 7%. It could both be attributed to players buying PUBG or any of the new small titles.

While Steam has its best year so far, the number of new users joining the platform and buying games can’t keep up with the number of new titles being released. On the graph above you can see the total time Steam users spend playing indie titles. It grows with every Steam sale, but not nearly enough.

That’s because Steam Direct brought in a lot of new titles to the platform. It wasn’t nearly as disruptive as Steam Greenlight, though.

But let’s go back to the prices. I’ve already mentioned that the average prices of games on Steam are going down. This situation is affected severely by the regular Steam sales that taught users to wishlist and wait instead of buying immediately.

If you look at the full price of the games on Steam, you can see a normal distribution around $9.99 — a so-called sweet spot that a lot of indies love.

But it’s very different if you look into the total revenue, even with all the sales and discounts taken into account.

We still see the same normal distribution, but this time around $19.99 price point with a huge spike for full-priced games.

Surprise: cheap games do not make a lot of money. People are still mostly buying relatively expensive and quality titles.

Geography

In February this year the Steam Hardware survey reported that 64% of Steam users had Simplified Chinese as the default language on their machines. That lead a lot of people to believe that China was rapidly taking over Steam.

All that while Steam is not officially available in China. Valve is only allowed to operate in Hong Kong. Of course, players from mainland China ignore this and play Steam games anyway.

If we look into the people that actually play anything, the numbers are quite different. Yes, there was a spike in the number of people playing from China, but not in the number of games they’re buying.

There is a huge difference between 19.5% and 64%, right? It’s even bigger if you consider the number of games they own: 64% vs 5.4%? This is insane.

The actual situation is weird and somewhat hilarious. With the rise of PUBG in China, a lot of local cybercafes started installing Steam on their machines, so their patrons could play PUBG.

Most of those cybercafes only installed the Steam client, they never bought the game. Therefore the discrepancy between Steam Hardware Survey (counts machines) and Steam Spy (counts players).

But some of cybercafes did buy PUBG. An average cafe charges $3 per hour of play and having the most popular new game available obviously helped them attract clients. Of course, being able to play on someone else’s account with no repercussions for cheating, lead to a rise of cheaters in PUBG from China, most of them playing from cybercafes. Even if a machine gets banned, it’s just $15 in the game’s cost for a cybercafe owner. Just a business expense.

Let’s look at the US for comparison.

The share of the users from USA steadily declines, but that’s not because Americans are playing less. It’s just Steam has reached the point of saturation in most Western markets.

US users are buying way more than people from China. Again, expected, given the difference in GDP per capita.

So, while you shouldn’t discount China as a market for your game, please remember that it still is smaller than the US market on Steam.

But they sure play PUBG a lot.

Talking about the markets. China and Russia are two huge markets where people buy indie games. But they buy less on average and enjoy special regional pricing, making these markets less lucrative at the moment.

USA and the big countries of Western Europe remain the biggest markets for indie titles on Steam for now.

Summary

2017 was the best year for Valve so far: more games, more sales, more gamers.

Although there weren’t nearly enough new gamers to buy all the new games.

Steam sales are heavily skewed to the top, but it was always like this. We see more games joining the tail than ever and affecting averages.

Which makes Steam similar to most entertainment markets (think movies, music and books).

Games at higher price-points make more money, especially full-priced AAA titles.

Duh.

There are many users from China on Steam, but they don’t seem to be buying much outside of PUBG.

China is the biggest gaming market in the world, but it’s not yet reflected on Steam.

Steam Direct caused a significant increase in the number of new titles releases but it’s nothing compared to the Greenlight launch.

Steam Greenlight started it all and while Direct removed some barriers, even with Greenlight in place we’d see more games this year than before.

Do you want to know more?

If you’d like to learn more about Steam games and current state of its affairs, visit Steam Spy and follow me on Twitter.

You can also support me on Patreon and be the first to get access to all the cool insights and features of Steam Spy.

Steam in 2017 was originally published in Sergiy Galyonkin’s blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

An average indie title these days is priced $8.72 on Steam. During the last Summer Sale the price went down to the mind-boggling $4.63 and yet the average sales are at their lowest at 21,000 copies.

Small indie titles usually have a smaller audience save for a few outliers. The problem with our approach is that people seem to normalize extremely successful breakout hits while assuming everything that didn’t sell north of a million copies is a complete failure.

This is simply not true. It’s understandable to follow the famous American dream “get rich or die trying”, but to have a sustainable market for indie titles we need to accept the fact that most of them will not sell hundreds of thousands of copies. Therefore, indie developers need to ensure their games are still profitable with a smaller audience.

And here lies the problem outlined in the title. The indie games are too damn cheap.

You can find indies in any other big entertainment market: movies, comics, music. Everywhere else small creators face the same problem: making the ends meet with a relatively small audience. It’s never easy for a small guy and it will never be, but in most other industries indie products are still sold at the same price as big AAA titles from established brands and companies.

It’s a simple math, really. Say, you’re an indie rock band and your next indie album will only sell 20,000 copies. All the while J Lo’s newest hit will move millions. Do you think her fans are avoiding your album because they can’t afford it? Do you think they’ll give it a try if you discount it to death?

You’re already at a disadvantage because you have a smaller audience, so why would you reduce your chances of survival by charging your fans less for your product?

While 21,000 copies on average doesn’t sound like a lot, it actually is. I’ve worked for a magazine that at its lowest had a similar circulation with almost no ads. Yet its sales were able to support a team of several talented individuals and pay the bills for a modest office and printing services. And our magazine wasn’t priced cheaper than, say, Vogue or Men’s Health. It was actually a bit more expensive.

Yes, your indie title may only appeal to a small subset of gamers. Yes, you might not be ready to charge $59.99 for it like the big guys do— and they actually charge more per user with their collector’s editions, in-app purchases and season passes. So please, stop undermining your game because somehow you think it’s not worth the asking price. Add value if you think that is the case, not lower the price.

I applaud Jonathan Blow’s decision to sell The Witness for $39.99. The game is sitting at 460 thousand owners on Steam Spy right now with discounts, sales and everything — and it never went below $19.99 on Steam! Do you really think it would’ve sold 4 times more if he charged $9.99 from the start? Somehow, I doubt it.

Instead of discounting your title from the start, maybe invest some time into explaining why it’s worth the price you are charging for it. It’s obviously harder than just slapping $9.99 tag on it like everyone else does.

This is especially true for pre-orders. I see many indie companies offering discounts for pre-orders, sometimes going as high as 33%. Why would you charge your most loyal fans less? Maybe, instead of asking for a lower price, add more value to the pre-order, like the big guys are doing? Early access to the game, extra content like a soundtrack or a playable prototype, even an exclusive achievement is better for your fans than just charging them couple of dollars less. They’re pre-ordering your title not because it’s cheap, but because they believe in you and want you to succeed, so let them help you.

I understand the repercussions you might face. Some people will claim they can’t afford to pay extra $10 for your game. Some will write long opinion pieces or forum posts about how wrong you are by making money from your hard work — just look at reactions to The Witness launch price, mentioned above. And it’s fine. Just remind yourself that if someone can’t afford your game right now, they can always buy it several months later when Steam Sale will inevitably encourage you to discount it.

If the game is worth the gamers’ time, it’s also worth their money.

The indie games are too damn cheap was originally published in Sergiy Galyonkin’s blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

You’ve heard this talk before: iPad was supposed to replace PC for the majority of casual users dragging us into the sci-fi future of thin and powerful devices that can do everything.

Of course, it didn’t happen and is unlikely to happen shortly, but iPad can indeed replace PC in certain use cases. The exciting news is that the number of these use cases is growing.

I’ve been using iPad as my travel computer since iPad 2. Emails, simple texts (like this one), presentations, coding, and even spreadsheets — as I changed the devices, their ability to do more serious work grew. I’m still not at the point where iPad can replace my MacBook Pro or a desktop, but I feel way more confident taking short trips with just iPad Pro.

I’m an amateur photographer, and I’ve been using iPad with Lightroom for quite some time now. My process was always the same:

1. Take some pictures
2. Transfer RAW files to iPad with Camera Connection Kit
3. Edit them in Lightroom Mobile
4. Post some decent ones on Instagram
5. Come back home and finish editing in the desktop version of Lightroom
6. Post to Flickr or 500px (or to my SmugMug)

The step #5 with the desktop PC is necessary not because iPad can’t handle advanced photo processing. It’s because Adobe decided to limit Lightroom Mobile’s interface. The visualization engine is absolutely the same.

The hardware is no longer the limiting factor, and hopefully, at some point, Adobe might decide to let its paying users access the features they’re paying for.

Thankfully, Adobe isn’t the only company on the market. Serif recently released Affinity Photo for iPad, and while it’s not exactly Photoshop, it’s a remarkably powerful photo editor with layers, masking, non-destructive editing, HDR and a lot of other features. More than enough for a casual photographer like me.

I’d even go as far as to say that Affinity Photo on iPad Pro provides better user experience because of Apple Pencil. Making simple edits, replacing backgrounds, removing shadows and visual clutter from the picture is so much faster on iPad Pro than on MacBook Pro.

In the recent weeks, I stopped transferring photos to MacBook unless I want to do some cumbersome stuff like merging HDR from photos shot hand-held. There is just no reason for this anymore: Lightroom renders JPEGs faster on iPad Pro 10.5 than it does on my MacBook Pro 2015 and I can do almost everything else in Affinity Photo.

Your mileage will certainly vary, but I found that for short trips I can leave my MacBook Pro at home. And if I find something difficult to edit on iPad Pro I can always access it on MacBook Pro (or desktop) later at home because it’s already in the cloud.

While I think iPad is unlikely to replace my laptop in the nearest future, it’s getting closer and closer to that.

The biggest limit is not the device anymore — it’s the software. I feel like software developers are rightfully cautious about creating expensive full-blown apps for the device that is still considered to be a modern version of a coffee book.