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Apple kills its affiliate programme.

Apple in 'are cunts' shocker!

I'm finding it hard to muster up any sympathy for TouchArcade, though. Eggs/basket.
 
Saul Goodman said:
I'm finding it hard to muster up any sympathy for TouchArcade, though. Eggs/basket.
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a) omg @ your member number (!)
b) in what sense re: TA? Their reliance on iOS, you mean?

Fair comment. It’s what’s made them useful / valuable to me :D No other site comes close, in terms of reporting on iOS gaming. (They’ve clearly made some attempts at diversification - like a weekly roundup of switch titles. But, yeah.)
 
mrs quoad said:
a) omg @ your member number (!)
b) in what sense re: TA? Their reliance on iOS, you mean?

Fair comment. It’s what’s made them useful / valuable to me :D No other site comes close, in terms of reporting on iOS gaming. (They’ve clearly made some attempts at diversification - like a weekly roundup of switch titles. But, yeah.)
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a) I know! :D
b) Yes. Apple are well known for wanting everything for themself. They have no loyalty to their customers, so it's no shock they have none for their affiliates.
 
In a move I’m going to describe as very odd indeed, toucharcade have just indulged in what appears to be some particularly futile self harming.

One of their main features is a weekly “out now” post. It provides app descriptions of all new games released that week, accompanied (at the end) by a list of links to the App Store. One for each new game. Giving the price and, well. A place to buy it.

That list was literally what drew me to toucharcade, and my Thursday morning ritual has been “fire up out now, skip to bottom, scan for premium games (ie, those with a price tag!), follow up any that look interesting: a) in the post, higher up; b) in the forum threads; and / or c) in the App Store.” It’s led to discovering some real hidden gems over the years.

But, erm. The list of links has now been deleted. Presumably bc there’s no financial incentive as the affiliate programme has been closed. So it’s just a list of app descriptions. No price listed. No link to buy anything.

Tbf, the absence of cost info makes the whole thing pointless, from my perspective. I’m not going to follow up free games. And, tbf, they’re right in their gripe - if this is what TA are now offering, then they have become redundant over and above what the App Store offers - in terms of identifying new and interesting apps, at least.

Idk. It raises a bit of a philosophical question - what is the point of TA now? A review site, with discussion forums? Sounds ok, tbf. But... they’ve regularly made it clear that they expect to fund at least 2 (three?) full time adult salaries from their site income, plus a half tonne of traveling and business related expenses.

That seems... ambitious? For a few reviews, and a bit of info about upcoming apps.

I’m obvs underestimating the work involved, quite massively. But what they’re left with seems more like an enthusiast’s hobby than a full time career. For multiple people.
 
No doubt the reviewers will get snapped up elsewhere, and the site potentially incorporated into one of the media giants, it seems the only plausible route for survival.

There is a hard core base of indy review sites, owned and run by people themselves who shell out for the games themselves. I personally don't see how they manage to find the time or money, but they do. I guess from advertising revenue?
 
cybershot said:
No doubt the reviewers will get snapped up elsewhere...
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They really won't you know. Many of those independent review sites are struggling, especially with the growth of ad blockers and there's no shortage of people who would love to get a job reviewing stuff.
 
editor said:
especially with the growth of ad blockers
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Interestingly, I'm now coming across sites that display huge pop ups when they detect my ad blocker refusing the load the page and asking me to unblock the site from the blocker.

I'm not sure who ends up being the bigger tosser. Me for going elsewhere, or them for demanding me to turn off the blocker.
 
cybershot said:
Interestingly, I'm now coming across sites that display huge pop ups when they detect my ad blocker refusing the load the page and asking me to unblock the site from the blocker.

I'm not sure who ends up being the bigger tosser. Me for going elsewhere, or them for demanding me to turn off the blocker.
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Unless you festoon pages with a whole itinerary of affiliate links, pop-ups pop-unders and other annoying ads, there's really not much money in running review sites, even ones that get a decent amount of traffic. This I know from experience!
 
editor said:
Unless you festoon pages with a whole itinerary of affiliate links, pop-ups pop-unders and other annoying ads, there's really not much money in running review sites, even ones that get a decent amount of traffic. This I know from experience!
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TA has been heading in this direction.

They've attempted to broaden their market by posting weekly 'SwitchArcade' articles; and they've moved increasingly towards huge top-loading banners, accompanied by a bucketload of spam for Amazon (who also have some sort of affiliate programme, apparently?!) They've also tried a Patreon (or two). And, oh yep, bumped their weekly 'this is how you can support us' page every week for a good few months.

I feel slightly awful for saying this, but I do feel as if they overestimate their value a bit. The forums are a bit useful, sometimes, for some games. Particularly wrt getting first impressions from people who actually buy games. (Some will have decent informative commentary on gameplay; others disintegrate into pages of rage about MFi controller support, the paucity of iPhone X support, the outrageous indecency of having a paid game WITH IAP, or the horrors of freemium. It's not really a community. It's more of a sometimes-useful place for a small amount of additional info. Very rarely does it progress so far as to include anything useful or informative about games, like game guides / wikis. It's far more likely that a 40 page thread will have 300 people popping up and saying 'is this any good?' with three people posting 'omg! Update.')

For the amount of content, though... Yeah, IDK. Coupla posts a day, half of which are 'OMFG a game is coming,' and the other half are reviews, half of which are outsourced? For two (have checked!) full-time salaries? Great if they can keep it going, like. But particularly with the binning of new apps' prices / links, they're really not adding much value to my week any more.
 
Youtube has made those sites obsolete. Who wants to read about what someone thinks of a game when you can actually see someone playing it whilst reviewing it?
 
I much prefer reading thought-out pieces of criticism which have a beginning, middle and end, draw in references to other games and media etc to watching someone play something on YouTube and make comments about it while they’re doing it. Really the two aren’t even the same thing; the latter is generally much more about trying to establish personal contact (or a feeling of this) between viewer and presenter.

Of course there’s no guarantee that a written review is going to be any good either, but at least you can tell pretty quickly rather than have to hang around for ten minutes.
 
Saul Goodman said:
Youtube has made those sites obsolete. Who wants to read about what someone thinks of a game when you can actually see someone playing it whilst reviewing it?
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It depends what it is, and also my whereabouts plays a huge part. At work, between tasks for example, I can get away with reading articles. YouTube not so much.

Ditto when on my phone, killing time out and about. I don't want to have a video blaring out, especially if I'm without headphones.
 
Amazon Item of the Day: Amazon Basics Super Sale
desperate toucharcade moneybid said:
For instance, this $5 Switch case is functionally identical to those that cost twice as much. We even use Amazon dog poo bags, and most of my HDMI cables are these Amazon Basics braided cables which work just fine while being way cheaper. My Amazon Basics spiralizer is no more or less junky than any other one I’ve used at friends’ houses when the low carb thing came heavily into fashion. Oddly enough, the best Amazon Basics product I own is this toiletry bag which I bought to replace a (very) expensive Samsonite bag that was very similar and the Amazon bag is … nicer? I’m not sure how that turned out to be the case.

These category-wide sales on Amazon are always a bit overwhelming as they sell so much stuff, but I guess way to look at the main Amazon Basics section as if you’re wandering down the clearance aisle at Walmart where you ignore $3 mop heads(unless you need one of those?) and zero in on things like $15 Switch AC adapter/charger, a $17 backlit “gaming keyboard", a $6 bag for a SNES Classic and other weird stuff which might be just junk, or intensely useful to you!
Click to expand...

Words fail me.
 
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