Upcoming Changes to Kiip
MChewie
Inactive, Chef Emeritus Posts: 32
Hello everyone,
GameSalad is always on the lookout for new and innovative ways for our developers to better monetize their games. That's why we decided to experiment with services such as Kiip as a way for our Pro developers to earn additional revenue from their games. Integrating and maintaining these services in GameSalad Creator requires time and resources to keep them up to date and operational. While we've seen some great success stories with Kiip's "real world rewards" monetization service (such as AlphaNoize's CheeseMan), we haven't had enough developers utilize this feature in order to justify ongoing maintenance.
As such, we are going to remove the current implementation of Kiip in the next release of GameSalad Creator. Those currently utilizing Kiip will continue to collect revenue until October 31st, 2012. Final payments on Kiip revenue will be processed by the end of the 2012 calendar year. Going forward, we'll continue to work with Kiip to test out some of their upcoming monetization services and we may integrate Kiip back into Creator at a future date. As always, we will continue to explore and investigate additional opportunities with other monetization partners and services that will best serve this community.
Thanks,
Mark Chuberka
GameSalad is always on the lookout for new and innovative ways for our developers to better monetize their games. That's why we decided to experiment with services such as Kiip as a way for our Pro developers to earn additional revenue from their games. Integrating and maintaining these services in GameSalad Creator requires time and resources to keep them up to date and operational. While we've seen some great success stories with Kiip's "real world rewards" monetization service (such as AlphaNoize's CheeseMan), we haven't had enough developers utilize this feature in order to justify ongoing maintenance.
As such, we are going to remove the current implementation of Kiip in the next release of GameSalad Creator. Those currently utilizing Kiip will continue to collect revenue until October 31st, 2012. Final payments on Kiip revenue will be processed by the end of the 2012 calendar year. Going forward, we'll continue to work with Kiip to test out some of their upcoming monetization services and we may integrate Kiip back into Creator at a future date. As always, we will continue to explore and investigate additional opportunities with other monetization partners and services that will best serve this community.
Thanks,
Mark Chuberka
Comments
What are developers who have already integrated Kiip into our apps supposed to do after October 31st? We as a company have made a serious push towards integrating Kiip in our apps, and thus have updated many of them to take advantage of the Kiip Rewards system. Furthermore, we have made several marketing efforts towards bringing the implementation of Kiip throughout our apps visible to our users. Currently, our company's website, Facebook page, press releases, and app descriptions state the implementation of the Kiip rewards system across multiple apps on multiple platforms.
Are we seriously supposed to push out another update for EACH app that currently has Kiip enabled because you all have decided it's not worth it? As a paying customer, I would prefer to make the decision myself what is and what is not worth my time. Not only does this change greatly increase the amount of work that has to be done on our end, but it significantly lowers the value of a GameSalad pro license for our company. Not having a reporting system on Kiip or Playhaven revenue is bad enough, but completing removing the Kiip system out from under paying customers with very little warning is unacceptable to me. The fact that you have professional, paying customers using your software should be enough "justification" to continue maintenance on pro services.
Therefore, would you please reconsider your decision to drop support for the Kiip Rewards feature?
- Alex
However, for games PREVIOUSLY published with Kiip services, those games will continue to collect revenue until October 31st.
Does that help clarify things?
It's ridiculously easy to add AdMob to an app. Oh sure, it's harder to do as a GameSalad behavior, but I imagine that's no more difficult than the iAds behavior. What if the developer community feels that they need AdMob? I admit that I don't even like AdMob... but it is something of a standard. It's also a great solution for Android and iOS apps — as it works on both. The house advertisements feature is really nice for promoting your other apps.
Why continue to tarnish your brand by looking for other options but AdMob? After what just happened with Kiip, I thought you'd be more agreeable. Shouldn't your top goal be to keep paying subscribers happy? $299 a year is a lot of money. Why should these customers be restricted? If you want to look for other options, that's cool... maybe include those too... but why should paying customers have to be further restricted?
I may not like AdMob since Google took it over, but I know I could probably get my $299 back with it. I was making some pretty good money with AdMob before I started with GameSalad.
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As for getting another job, I'm thinking that GameSalad is a hobby to many. Just as I like the AR.Drone 2.0, I don't like the $299 price tag. That's a lot of money for something that could break so easily. The $299 is not the only cost for app development... Apple wants 30% and $99 a year... twice... once for Mac and again for iOS. It starts to add up.
And ultimately, it's not about the $299. What bothers me is that I don't feel like developers are the priority here. Otherwise, GameSalad would actively be supporting as many advertisers as they can. Why remove Kiip at all? Let developers administrate their own accounts. This is a "Pro" subscription, correct?
I got over 400.000 downloads in one of my free Apps for Android. I could have done same money, if there was Admob.
@Photics
I completely agree with all the points you made. While I'm not personally that interested in AdMob, it would make an excellent monetization tool for the GameSalad community.
IMO. Anyone resisting the opportunity to have another revenue stream at their disposal cannot be serious about revenue generation and that is what we are all after (primarily).
And I'm afraid to say... Saying "we are in discussion with other future monetization partners to meet the need of our developer community." brings very little comfort to us developers. Why? Because GS made a HUGE deal about implementing Kiip, as if it were worth pushing off so many other important features for. And here we are now, 6 months later, having Kiip removed because GS doesn't want to maintain it.
Really, what is so hard about admob? It may not be a huge money maker, but neither is iAds. It is the primary ad system in existence, GS users would implement it, and gives GS devs actual options in monetizing Android apps. I would think that could easily be defined as "to meet the need of our developer community". Is it because it doesn't offer a payment to GS?
I'm really not happy about this, I have just spent the last 3 month working with GS and Kiip. I have made 6 games all of which are going to be featured in the new kiip app and spent a large amount of time and money.
I have been giving my Kiip games away for FREE hoping to see revenue back from them. This has impacted any money I would have made from selling the paid versions.
There has to be another option!!!
Games take a while to be found, and downloaded. I've not even had a chance to see how well Kiip would pay out.
If there really are not that many people putting Kiip into their games then please find a way of signing over the tracking or payments of Kiip to the ones that have.
I'm so mad words I can not type the words I want to......
If I didn't see this happening from the beginning I would be personally disgusted, but since I wasn't at all enamored with fact that GS wanted my company's personal information and was unwilling to allow me, the developer, the chance to establish my own relationship with the 3rd party service, I stayed far away. I mean, PlayHaven has tremendous analytics, which is something I'd sign up for even if I wasn't earning money on top of it.
In all honesty, I think Kiip is getting away from games anyway, as their method for having people to cash in their rewards is severely lacking. I wouldn't say that's their fault, instead I would call them a friendster-like company (eg. two generations away from when their market will be ripe -- NFC is needed for these smart phone redemptions, plain and simple.)
As for whatever monetization ideas GS has planned in the future. If I'm not able to personally sign up for, and use the service as it's intended, I will NEVER use it. Especially after this snafu.
I think it would make more sense to do it this way:
1. The people who are already pro can use it until their subscription is up. So it would maintained until the date of the update next year.
2. Starting the day its been taken out, on the upgrade to pro page of the site, you take it off and the people who subscribe to GS Pro after the date of the update won't be able to use Kiip.
Then when the people who had pro before the update would be using Kiip until their subscription end and can decide whether or not they want to renew for the same price without Kiip. So everybody gets exactly what they were promised.
Getting admob would make me happier, but still I don't think this was handled correctly.
It seems that GS team will improve Kiip in the future( more features), temporary kiip will be removed, i think they will implement better version of Kiip in the next versions of GS
299 usd for Pro Version? so its really cheap for me
Some Devs using Gs make 300 usd per day
This is pretty simple - if you can't earn money, your game probably isn't good enough - adding ads won't make your game any better - it can make it only worse, if you ask me. As a player I hate ads.
I had previously sent a message to support asking if you could integrate Tap for Tap and you said my request had been noted and submitted for review. So I wanted to know if it was going to be integrated in the next few builds?
- Alex
Unfortunately tho i guess they have made the decision and like good sheepies we need to take it.
Please GS, just do admob already. We all know its not a get rich quick device. We know this. But its frustrating to be told that "GS knows best", particularly when this Kiip fiasco happens.
As developers submitting content in this wide open and fickle market, we can only hope to survive if we have options as to how we monetize our apps.
The likely problem with AdMob is that there is no kickback for GS involved. I'm guessing that Google is pretty unwilling to budge on that.
That's why we have(soon to be had) Kiip and Playhaven. GS makes money when you make money with these ad partners.
In a way it makes sense, because only allowing these types of ad services in their closed program should bring about more revenue because yes, an emerging successful model in the app markets is the freemium model. So there will likely be more users in the future who will be using ads to supplement their income on these apps. GS wants/needs to cash in on that especially since a giant portion of their model is based on a free service.
I get that.
What I don't get is why this idea translates to Pro User features. I made my feelings clear when Kiip and Playhaven were first implemented that I don't think it's right for GameSalad to make money off of Pro User's work. Even though Pro Users get the same % as they would if they had an individual account with these services, it isn't justified to have to pay a huge sum of money to be given the opportunity to make GS even more money, when instead GS could have gotten a better than regular % payout for their Pro Users.
AdMob won't get GS any money as a middleman, so it doesn't make sense to implement it for the free users. In turn, I guess it doesn't seem to make sense to take the time and resources to implement it for the Pro Users.
There are 2 issues that I have with this:
1. It's being asked for by a lot of people in this community and it's been asked for as long as I've been around. It's not a minor request made by people who don't know what they want. It's a feature that's been heavily sought after for a long time and whether or not it will be effective in creating better revenue for the users is irrelevant. That fact that we want it is what matters.
2. GS has weight in the mobile markets thanks to us. They can and should be using that weight more.
According to Steve Felter in this article: http://articles.businessinsider.com/2012-04-27/tech/31418438_1_gamesalad-app-store-steve-felter
"Last year, a little more than 15 percent of games in the iOS App Store were built using GameSalad."
That is a staggering figure. If they have the stats to show it's true (I'm sure they do), then there should be no issue going to Google and requesting a special version of AdMob to be implemented for GameSalad. Whatever it is that GameSalad is looking for in an advertising partner, they SHOULD be able to get it out of Google. GS isn't a company with a few hundred or even a couple thousand apps already created...according to the same article there have been 10,000 apps created with GameSalad on the iOS App Store. The numbers are very likely to grow if long requested features like AdMob are implemented into creator. Big companies, even giant ones like Google, are forced to listen to hard logic when those figures say they could be making more money and immediately gaining a major new platform for their ad distribution software.
If GS used their weight a little more then maybe it could be one of the companies that gets the early info/devices from Apple. Just like Gameloft does. It doesn't make sense to be playing catch up on features when you have such a huge holding on the market.
Even if it were actually impossible to make AdMob a profit creating feature for GS, implementing it as a feature along side the other ad platforms that do make GS money doesn't mean EVERYONE will choose AdMob. If you keep finding these innovative new companies with different approaches to ad sourcing and experience, then those choices will be exciting and useful to some developers, and you won't hear constant complaining about the lack of implementation of AdMob.
The bottom line is this:
The users of GameSalad Creator really want AdMob.
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