#monetization

[catandgirlcomic]

Tools of capitalism.

[avicinda]

If you are a non spending player (f2p) in Infinity Nikki, here is why you should care that the 5 star is 11 pieces and leading to a boycott:

Spending players, especially whales, are how YOU get to be f2p.

Because if a gacha game alienates their whales, it proceeds extremely quickly to "f2p can barely do anything at all" as the game slides faster and faster to pay to win to make up for losing their whales. Then f2p players leave. Then the game hits End of Service because no one is playing and paying for it anyway. No more Infinity Nikki for anyone. Infinity Nikki is not "too big to fail," it's big enough to withstand losing a lot of people, but the lower the revenue falls, the faster shit hits the fan for f2p.

You know why the game has been so generous with free outfits and pieces every month so far? Because that was the honeymoon period. They were trying to hook us in, and more importantly, they want happy whales who feel like they're getting their money's worth so they will keep spending.

We are now in the "fuck around and find out" phase of a gacha's lifetime, much earlier than I'd hoped. This is the part of the gacha timeframe where the devs increase monetization and things like the spending meter that I call Gacha Bullshit. This is when they test the waters and see how far they can get away with things.

11 pieces is an increase of pity by 20 pulls. No sane gacha game would do this unless they were testing the players' reaction. If you play any other gachas with a set pity, think very hard about how increasing those pities by 20 pulls would feel.

Mira Crown is a decent chunk of free pulls and diamonds for all players every month. Changing from every 14 days to once a month was the test. Conceding and changing it to twice a month is "we hear you, but we don't really want to listen, so shut up already."

If whales don't push back NOW against the increasing Gacha Bullshit, the devs start to add more, and, slowly, choke out the parts of the game that are f2p. This has happened before. This is why there's a "stupid" boycott! It's not "just" discourse.

You want your game to stay playable and fun for f2p? Then stop sneering at the very people who pay so you can play it f2p in the first place.

(This is not a defense of spending practices in predatory games, but it's the reality we live in that whales exist who want to spend money on things that make them happy.)

[incognitopolls]

If a game you enjoy (which previously had no active monetization scheme) updated to include one monetization scheme, which one would be LEAST likely to make you stop playing/uninstall?

Most of the content is split among many expensive DLCs

The majority of the game can only be accessed via a monthly paid subscription

Randomly-occurring ads that cannot be avoided or skipped

Optional ads that can be watched in exchange for a reward

Cosmetic items that can be bought directly (with real money)

Cosmetic items that can be bought indirectly (with premium game currency)

Gameplay advantages that can be bought with real money

Gameplay advantages that can be bought with premium game currency

Lootboxes that can be opened directly with real money

Lootboxes that can be opened indirectly with premium currency/"keys"

ANY of these would make me stop playing/uninstall a game

I don't play video games/show results

Voting ended onMar 11, 2025

This is not a market research poll; anon is not designing a game with shitty monetization strategies. They're just curious about which shitty monetization strategy people hate the most.

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We ask your questions anonymously so you don’t have to! Submissions are open on the 1st and 15th of the month.

[somesecretpie]

Fans and Creators of Webtoons!

I want to talk about Line Webtoon’s new “Super Like” program and why it sucks for literally everyone.

What is a “Super Like?”

According to their website, super likes are a new way for webtoon creators to monetize their work. Readers can pay real money to buy a super like for their favorite webtoon, and the creator gets a fraction of that money.

Wait, a fraction? Not all of it?

Yep! Webtoon skims quite a chunk off the top.

30% goes to Webtoon, and then another 30% of that amount goes to the payment processor.

So what do creators get? 49 cents for every dollar their fans try to give them. Literally half.

That’s pretty ludicrous, right?

Interestingly enough, they announced that they had a “tipping system” in the works in the same email they ended the CANVAS creator rewards program (and many comic creators livelihoods)

They said tipping system in their social media posts too

Obviously this tipping system is referring to super likes right? They say they’re going to do a tipping system, and then this rolls out.

But “tips” are not something that buisinesses can just take a cut of, at least not in the United States. According to the Department of Labor, it is illegal for any amount of tips from customers to go to an employer.

Webtoon is trying to walk back this language, of course. You won’t find the word “tip” anywhere on their website page explaining how it works. But those old social media posts are still up.

This is all pretty scummy

But wait, it gets worse!

They removed the Patreon button at the end of episodes and replaced it with this:

Yep! That’s right. Webtoon really said “what if we replace the tipping system that already existed with a shittier one where you only get half of it 🥺”

Unsurprisingly, they faced a ton of backlash.

Webtoon was quick to point out that the Patreon button was only removed from the end of episodes and there was still a button on the creator’s homepage. But of course, the end of episodes is where that button matters the most.

Creators know this. Webtoon knows this.

Eventually, after days of continued complaints from creators on social media, Webtoon went on damage control mode and announced that they would be putting the Patreon button back at the end of episodes—

As of right now (May 11th, 2024) the Patreon button is still not back.

***

So…Super likes are “super totally not a tip.”

But if they aren’t tips…what are they?

Well there’s a bit more to the story of what a super like actually is. After announceing the program, the app updated to reveal a new ranking category on the front page

When you click on this ranking tab, you can see that there is now both a daily and weekly ranking

If you’re a CANVAS creator, you know how difficult and seemingly random it can be to get your comic on the front page of the app—so my immediate worry was that comic creators were going to buy superlikes on their own series to get in this ranking and…

Yep, that’s already happening.

But why would webtoon even allow creators to buy superlikes for themselves? How does that make sense?

Surely goading desperate creators into buying superlikes can’t be that lucrative, can it?

No. I think there’s another, possibly even worse reason.

Fandom wars

If you’re into music, you probably are aware of how common it is for super fans to make concerted efforts to get their favorite musician to the top of the billboard charts. They coordinate over social media, stream music on loop as soon as an album drops to inflate the numbers, buy albums in bulk to increase sales, all so that they can say their fav is number one. It’s especially common among K-pop fans and swifties

This phenomena is well documented

Fans of Webtoons can be just as ravenous as K-pop, so I think Webtoon is trying to capitalize on this. They want to encourage fandom war and make money. That’s why they have this ranking. Not only can super fans brag about their favorite series topping the charts but they can wear their super like proudly on their reader profile that webtoon will be rolling out soon.

They’re just testing this super like stuff out on CANVAS right now, but once this starts up with originals? Oh. It will be a very profitable, very terrible mess.

(Oh and I mean profitable for webtoon, not creators, in case that wasn’t clear.)

***

Anyway, if you’re a creator, do yourself a favor and don’t enable super likes.

If you’re a fan of a webcomic, just donate to that creators patreon or Ko-Fi to show your support. Don’t give a red cent to webtoon because they did not do any of the work to make the series you love, alright?

Also check out my webtoon haha.

[askagamedev]

rockstar seems to take forever to develop games. how are they surviving? is the amount of profit their games bring enough to sustain their prolonged development cycles? it feels like if it was any other studio, they'd be dead in the water by now

The reason that Rockstar was able to keep things running for so long was because GTA Online still earns around half a billion dollars annually. At its peak, they were pulling in over a billion per year. That kind of money buys a lot of development time.

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[wip]

Hello! Can you add in ways for us to monetize our posts with affiliate links and sponsor banners? For example, adding a horizontal banner under some of my viral original work? This may be easier with a brand facing UI. Also, I honestly believe you should straight up just make a better version of Facebook, but a Tumblr version. Gen Z would love that. If no one else does it, I will.

Answer: Hey there, @2am-poetry.

Good news for you—it is already possible to add ads to your blogs and put affiliate links within your posts, and we would encourage you to read all about it at the Help Center. But note that you are limited to in-post affiliate links and/or linked image block banners in the blog network and the dashboard.

There’s more. With Blaze, you can send a post (whether yours or someone else’s) across Tumblr, which is shown as a Tumblr-sponsored post to an audience of your choosing. You can also select the location, language, and size of the audience—and target your post to relevant communities on Tumblr. 

We hope this helps. Thanks for your question, and keep them coming!

[karizard-ao3]

I have so many things to pay off right now (expensive repairs on my old car, lien on my new car, my kids 13th birthday trip, my cat's upcoming teeth extraction) that I'm kind of kicking around the idea of starting a Patreon to see if I can get a little extra money to put towards it all, but I also take issue with locking access to content behind a paywall so I'm not really sure how to navigate this, especially since writing is such a long process and I wouldn't have new things to share very often. I could raffle off a monthly drabble to paid subscribers, I guess? But idk if I could commit to more than that.

I was also thinking of a Substack but then that's also time consuming and what would i talk about? My favorite media? Original writing snippets?

Idk. I was not built for capitalism.