When I search for a new game in the Apple iOS app store or in the Google Play Store for Android, most of the games results show nothing but free games.
Why is it that in 2019, most mobile games are free? I know that pay to win is a big problem in the mobile gaming industry, but I want to know why is it gaming developers would choose to release free games or freemium games without a pay version available.It’s like they don’t even want anyone to straight up buy a game anymore.
Back when I got my first true smartphone, I remember logging into the app store and buying tons of enjoyable games to play on my iPhone 3GS. That was back in 2009 or 2010. A decade later, and it’s extremely rare to find a mobile game you can’t download for free. The problem with that is the experience is sacrificed by the developers and game distributes in an attempt to squeeze every penny out of the consumer. It seems gaming developers care much less about appealing to the masses to deliver a quality gaming experience, and instead wait for the “whales” who will get hooked and spend tons of money on in-app purchases.
In this video, you can see that all I wanted to do was find and pay for a good quality fishing game. The options for a game I could pay for and enjoy a console-like experience were extremely limited. I actually had to go way beyond the search results the app store was giving me for a mobile fishing game because every result served up in the app store gave me free games which were either pay-to-win, freemium or crippled by ads.
Do you know of any truly free games which are enjoyable to play and don’t ruin the experience with ads? Let me know in the comments.