Upcoming Changes to Kiip

MChewieMChewie Inactive, Chef Emeritus Posts: 32
edited August 2012 in News from the Dev Team
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
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Comments

  • osucowboy18osucowboy18 Member Posts: 1,307
    Mark,

    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
  • yasoofxyasoofx Member Posts: 332
    wait so release wont be happening until October 31st
  • LaurenSaladLaurenSalad Inactive, Chef Emeritus Posts: 650
    You can expect to see the removal of the Kiip behavior in GameSalad Creator in the upcoming release (within the next week).

    However, for games PREVIOUSLY published with Kiip services, those games will continue to collect revenue until October 31st.

    Does that help clarify things?
  • osucowboy18osucowboy18 Member Posts: 1,307
    Hello?? Any comments in regards to my questions stated above @LaurenSalad and/or @MChewie?
  • PhoticsPhotics Member Posts: 4,172
    Can we get AdMob now?
  • LaurenSaladLaurenSalad Inactive, Chef Emeritus Posts: 650
    We currently do not have plans for AdMob integration. But, we are in discussion with other future monetization partners to meet the need of our developer community. This includes looking into Android monetization options and better options for our international developer community.
  • PhoticsPhotics Member Posts: 4,172
    edited August 2012
    We currently do not have plans for AdMob integration. But, we are in discussion with other future monetization partners to meet the need of our developer community. This includes looking into Android monetization options and better options for our international developer community.
    Wow... what is it about AdMob that GameSalad doesn't like?

    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.
    meet the need of our developer community
    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.
  • capitalcarnagecapitalcarnage Member Posts: 371
    Oh you guys! April isn't for a fair few months yet, you got me tho i admit it.
  • Braydon_SFXBraydon_SFX Member, Sous Chef, PRO, Bowlboy Sidekick Posts: 9,271
    Oh good, Android monetization partners!
  • IsabelleKIsabelleK Member, Sous Chef Posts: 2,807
    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.
    Really man, 299 USD is NOT a lot of money, and if you can't earn such small amount in one year, selling games in the App Store... well, maybe you should find another job.
  • PhoticsPhotics Member Posts: 4,172
    edited August 2012
    Really man, 299 USD is NOT a lot of money, and if you can't earn such small amount in one year, selling games in the App Store... well, maybe you should find another job.
    What other program out there is $299 a year? Adobe's Creative Suite comes to mind, but that's an industry standard. It's a suite that includes multiple applications. But here... this is a highly competitive space, and blunders like this squanders GameSalad's lead.

    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?
  • scrapee_netscrapee_net Member Posts: 424
    I completly agree with everything Photics wrote. I have no idea about what Gamesalad staff have agains Admob to continue ignoring it, even so many users asking for. It can not be the best monitization platform, but it helps a lot.

    I got over 400.000 downloads in one of my free Apps for Android. I could have done same money, if there was Admob.
  • dmilinovichiiidmilinovichiii Member Posts: 620
    Getting rid of Kiip is completely unacceptable and this kind of thing is the reason I am no longer paying for Pro. Members have paid for a service and now it is being taken from them without reimbursement. That is wrong and I think that's even illegal (although I'm not certain about that). I would like to know what GameSalad has to loose by keeping Kiip? Maybe if there was at least a justification for removing this service, people wouldn't be so mad.

    @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.
  • lycettebroslycettebros Member, PRO Posts: 1,598
    edited August 2012
    Admob, Photics, Agree!

    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).
  • shark1505shark1505 Member Posts: 75
    Mr.Rinoy has a good point. This is comparable to running a TV ad but the station taking off the last 5 seconds where it shows the company you are working for. You talk about it being too much maintenance, well describe the problem because the way I see it, the only thing GS has to worry about with Kiip is distributing paychecks.
  • anithmukanithmuk Member Posts: 235
    Well this isn't going to end well
  • LiquidGameworksLiquidGameworks Anchorage, AKMember, Sous Chef Posts: 956
    I have always been curious as to why GS is allergic to admob...

    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?
  • zombiesdrulezombiesdrule PRO Posts: 131
    edited August 2012
    @MChewie

    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......
  • RacetotheMoonRacetotheMoon Member Posts: 323
    edited August 2012
    This is where GS should have charged their '300k' users an extra $50 to have the ability to use Kiip/PlayHaven, but instead they thought they were going to make some tremendous windfall by acting as an intermediary.

    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.
  • BobDBobD Member, PRO Posts: 374
    I have 4 apps with Kiip in the Apple review queue. I spent a lot of time adding Kiip. I upgraded to Pro in order to add Kiip. Do I have to remove the Kiip code in order to make fixes to my apps? (I am not a happy camper with GameSalad)
  • HapiappsHapiapps Member Posts: 373
    edited August 2012
    One of the main reasons I went pro was to integrate Kiip into my future games. IMO, the way you are ripping it out of the system doesn't seem like a real favorable decision and I know GS has to make money but this is seeming like a somewhat ripoff in a sense since it said when we upgraded that we would be able to use Kiip, although it doesn't say the features are subject to change on this page: http://gamesalad.com/creator/pricing

    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.
  • alek1805alek1805 Member Posts: 65
    edited August 2012
    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

    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
  • IsabelleKIsabelleK Member, Sous Chef Posts: 2,807
    edited August 2012
    Let's make one thing clear - if you can't earn money from making games with GS, you won't earn them if GS adds Admob, or any other monetization services.
    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.
  • crazycam99crazycam99 Paris, FranceMember Posts: 519
    @LaurenSalad @MChewie
    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?
  • Cee3pee0Cee3pee0 Member, PRO Posts: 194
    If you are going to remove Kiip, please at least give us admob! I would rather have admob anyway!
  • osucowboy18osucowboy18 Member Posts: 1,307
    Getting rid of Kiip is completely unacceptable and this kind of thing is the reason I am no longer paying for Pro. Members have paid for a service and now it is being taken from them without reimbursement. That is wrong and I think that's even illegal (although I'm not certain about that). I would like to know what GameSalad has to loose by keeping Kiip? Maybe if there was at least a justification for removing this service, people wouldn't be so mad.
    I completely agree with this! The fact that GameSalad made a huge deal about opening Kiip up and then use the excuse of not enough people are using it to "justify" removing it. I don't see it as that simple of a decision. GameSalad is a business that offered a service. Myself, as well as others, paid for that service (and continue to pay for it) and suddenly that service is removed. Not only is this unacceptable to me as a customer, but I will be investigating the legality of this decision. Either way, I will seriously be reconsidering my future with GameSalad, especially since their competitors seem to treat their customers in a more fair manner. What's even worse is I haven't seen one single head chef comment on user's concerns about removing Kiip. Instead, they choose to answer minor questions not even associated with the topic at hand. I expect better customer service for the price of a pro account.

    - Alex
  • capitalcarnagecapitalcarnage Member Posts: 371
    I cant help but feel they dropped this on a Friday as they were anticipating a backlash.

    Unfortunately tho i guess they have made the decision and like good sheepies we need to take it.
  • LiquidGameworksLiquidGameworks Anchorage, AKMember, Sous Chef Posts: 956
    Let's make one thing clear - if you can't earn money from making games with GS, you won't earn them if GS adds Admob, or any other monetization services.
    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 really don't think this is the way to approach it, and really isn't true. Its pretty well known that the future of apps is in the freemium model, which requires varied uses of advertising and IAP. The Apple market is no longer the only playground either... The Google Play, Amazon, and B+N stores are markets which have a large following, and only growing larger. Markets like Google Play are driven almost entirely by free ads, and I think that model will spread to other markets. In short, its a little simplistic and insulting to say that if you can't sell a .99 cent game on Google Play, then your game sucks. That, and ad monetization allows for incremental earning, which isn't possible with paid games. A user may only spend $1 today, and they'll probably buy the new edition of Angry Birds, not a GS game (regardless of its quality). They will download every free game which looks appealing, which will include the GS game. In this, a developer may be able to earn a few cents, more or less. With multitudes of free downloads, this few cents can become a few dollars, and a few dollars a day makes all the difference in the world. And all possible because of ad monetization. If you want to keep your apps paid and completely ad free, that's your prerogative, and I applaud you for attempting to keep games pure. But please don't shoot down legitimate complaints against GS by telling people their games suck because a fickle and cheapass market won't buy them. We complain to GS in the hopes that GS will heed our voices, and make changes to the benefit of developers (as appears to be their intent usually). If I wasn't hoping to move GS to change, I wouldn't complain. I'd just leave to one of the competitors.

    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.
  • entersimonentersimon Member, PRO Posts: 273
    Personally speaking, I have little interest in using any form of ads for the current projects I'm working on, but I am on board with the idea that GameSalad needs to implement AdMob as a feature.

    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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