Opinion: iOS development is a loss-making activity

Llamasoft Studio no longer releases iOS projects and has removed existing games from the App Store. That’s because making games for Apple means working at a loss. This opinion was shared by the co-founder of the studio Jeff Minter (Jeff Minter) in a blog.

Pictured: Jeff Minter

Minter has been developing games under the Llamasoft or Minotaur Project brand since 1981. These are mostly indie projects for consoles. However, there are also 9 projects for iOS in the developer’s portfolio. More precisely, they were. As of June 27, there are no Minter games in the App Store.

“We released games for iOS for two years in a row and eventually stopped because the revenue was so tiny that we started working at a loss,” explains Minter.

Screenshot from the GoatUp game

All games, according to the author, received “excellent reviews” from leading gaming resources and no less remarkable reaction from players. But not money.

“So that you understand how terrible everything turned out to be with iOS, I’ll give you an example. After 2 years of working with iOS, I released the game on a Sony handheld console. Everyone described this console as “unintelligible”. But it literally brought us thousands of times more revenue than iOS, where, in theory, billions of users should have lived. With all this in mind, I would be an absolute psycho if I continued to make games for iOS,” says Minter.

Screenshots from the game Minotaur Rescue

The last game on the “apple” platform – an endless runner called GoatUp 2 – was released by the developer in 2013. At the time of release, the game was paid (although now a free version of it is available on Minter’s website). Since that time, Minter has not made any other games on Apple, but only supported existing projects. However, with the release of the iPhone, those games that have already appeared began to break. The developer decided that investments in upgrading and maintaining projects do not pay for themselves and removed the titles from the App Store.

Gameplay of the Super Ox Wars game

“It’s a pity that everything ended like this. The saddest thing is that if we had at least a couple more users, if we had at least a couple of ups instead of constant falls, I would have released toys indefinitely. I never wanted to earn as much as the creators of Angry Birds, modest amounts would be enough for me. But these days, mobile is “everything or nothing.” And most developers get just “nothing”. And there are no average options, which I was looking for,” Minter concludes the post.

Screenshots Gridrunner

Let’s add that the most famous projects of the developer on iOS were Minotaur Rescue, GoatUp, Super Ox Wars and Gridrunner. The games are styled after the projects of the 80s – from music to gameplay.

Source: Minotaur Project