I'll poor one out for TouchArcade (and Joystiq. and Rooster Teeth. Just checked, and gonintendo is still kicking!)
But the truth is I don’t care much anymore. I loved TA because they helped me find fun games. And while I’ve found a few from them in the last few years like Peglin most of their coverage is unsurprisingly what most of the industry makes: pay to win with smurfberries advertising laden crap.
I strongly believe the iOS gaming scene died the day IAPs came out.
There is the incredibly rare indie game that you can pay for now, and Apple Arcade. While I enjoy that most of the good games I’ve played before (a plus on the name = existed before). Those that I haven’t played or are new often were obviously designed for IAPs and aren’t that fun when they’re removed.
And I know devs seem to hate it, and I’m not surprised. But it’s the only option I’ve got left.
I’ll miss you, Touch Arcade. You long outlasted the era of greatness for the platform you covered. Thanks for making it as long as you did. One more sign we can’t have nice things because ruthless unnecessarily exploitive capitalism.
Thanks to the TA team and here’s hoping the best for them.
Essentially the noise is that people are locked into habits in the app stores. It takes huge amounts of money to get people to try something new, and this invariably leads to amazing conservatism on the part of publishers. The big breakout hit last year was a Monopoly spin off, admittedly well executed, but with absolutely massive marketing pushes.
Steam is squeezing on one side and web games on the other. When the mobile herd simply moves where the marketing dollars lead them who needs reviews?