anti-consumer practices Archives

A Week of Anti-Consumer Practices – Twitterrific Screws Over Paying Users

As expected, it seems that this week is full of anti-consumer practices. Besides the Game Freak stating that not all Pokemon will be transferable in their new games, Twitterrific pulls an anti-consumer practice by forcing a major update and putting ads back in for users. Now, users who payed $7.99 to remove the ads are greeted with ads. To remove them, you have to pay a monthly or yearly subscription or pay $30, which is a 73% increase.

I understand that developers need to make money as development is not free. I’m an iOS and Mac developer for now. I rely on donations and App Store sales to cover development costs. However, there is no excuse to force an update and then put a ransom for users who paid to more money. This anti-consumer practice shows that you only care about money and you are willing to screw over paying customers. Even the excuses the owners said that they won’t be able to notify users to upgrade if they released the new version as a separate app as said in a tweet.

Again, the legacy unsupported app would simply *not* have been left untouched and you’re assuming it would have been. Banners and pop ups added to T5 to direct people to T6 would result in the same user experience that we ended up with – but without any of the new features.

— Sean Heber (@BigZaphod) June 15, 2019

The end result of that approach would have been *worse* than where we ended up. There is no possible way from a “continuing to stay in business” point of view that we could NOT have altered T5 to direct all those people to T6. Stop assuming T5 would have been frozen in time.

— Sean Heber (@BigZaphod) June 15, 2019

This is inexcusable. I have paid two different upgrades for Twitterrific for iOS during their heyday and now they want more. No, I will not accept this slimy business practice. If they don’t want this backlash, they should just release the new version as a separate app. Then put a dismissible one-time notification notifying users there is a new major upgrade. Then, you wouldn’t receive the backlash you are having now and you might have more people willing to pay. As a result of this, I switched my iOS Twitter client to Tweetbot.

Now they pulled this anti-consumer practice, I will be boycotting all applications developed by Iconfactory since they only care about money instead of making paying customers happy. I advise everyone to call them out of this practice as well and boycott their products as well.

Thoughts about Angry Joe and the Nintendo’s Creators Program

I have to admit that while I am a long time fan of Nintendo for the fact that I own a lot of their consoles and games and just brought a Japanese New 3DS, I have been very disappointed with what they were doing in the past few years with their region locking policies (all the consoles except Nintendo’s are region free now), backwards Youtube policy, inability to keep the Amibos in stock, etc. Aside from the 3DS, Nintendo is not doing that well and they know it.

While some can argue that Angry Joe knew full well that it’s going to get claimed so he can make an angry rant about is beside the point. Nintendo is clearly in the wrong (Totalbiscuit does a good job explaining how anti-consumer the Nintendo’s Creator’s program is.) While it’s their right to control how their intellectual property is used, it’s not a good business practice. Most gaming companies (e.g. Valve, Sony, Microsoft, etc) have changed their minds and allow people to make videos about their games without taking any cut. They understand the value of people creating videos promoting or reviewing their products through Let’s Plays and critical reviews. I think the creator’s program not only makes Nintendo look greedy since it only leaves the content creator a small cut after Youtube and the Managed Content Network takes the cut, but it also discourages people to make any videos about their games. Furthermore, the program only approves videos that only say positive things about Nintendo, which is obviously a conflict of interest.

I feel that Nintendo is behind the times mostly because of their conservative views on how they operate their business (and I understand since I’m studying the Japanese language). Since the cultures between the east and west are different, it’s understandable why they would take a draconian approach. However, I think this will hurt their goodwill in the long-term not just because of their Youtube policies, but also other problems as mentioned earlier with keeping the Amibos, new 3DS,and Game Cube Controller Attachment in stock. They have to realize that negative publicity is going to hurt them in the end since ultimately, the consumer makes the choice whether or not he/she wants to buy the product. Nintendo is not exactly doing well. Fanboys have to realize that they are a business and if they don’t address the negative publicity from anti-consumer practices, they are going to end up like Sega. I’m sure that nobody wants them to see them go that way, but hopefully, they will wake up soon and change their ways before it’s too late.

With that, I will no longer cover any Nintendo games (aside from third party games) until they change their policy.

Update: Here is another take on the issue from JoshJepson, who is familiar with Nintendo Content IDing videos.