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Clicker Heroes 2 abandons free-to-play and real-money shop for "ethical" and game design reasons

LESS T_T

Arcane
Joined
Oct 5, 2012
Messages
13,582
Codex 2014
I usually don't make a thread for this kind of thing, but this seems pretty interesting to watch: http://www.clickerheroes2.com/paytowin.php

In short, the sequel to one of the most famous idle clicker games abandons free-to-play and real-money shop model, because 1) "ethical" reason: they don't want people addicted to their game pay thousands, and destroy their lives, 2) game design reason: they want to update the game the way the free-to-play model doesn't allow, and want to encourage modding.

So they decided to make Clicker Heroes 2 a paid game, for 30 USD. :M

Yeah, people of Internet, including me, scratch their heads and think who the hell pay 30 dollars upfront for an idle game. But let's see how this unfolds, shall we?

Why Clicker Heroes 2 is abandoning free-to-play

We had to choose one of two models: Paid upfront like traditional games, or free-to-play with a real-money shop like Clicker Heroes 1. We chose paid upfront, for $29.99 (fully refundable for a year after launch), and we are in a situation where we have to explain ourselves to a massive number of players who were expecting/hoping for a free sequel. There are several reasons why we are making this decision.

Ethical reasons
Games are inherently addictive. That alone is not a bad thing, until it gets abused. In Clicker Heroes 1, we never tried to abuse players with our real-money shop, and for the most part we designed it without the shop in mind so that you never have to purchase rubies to progress. Despite this, we found that some number of players spent many thousands of dollars on rubies. I can only hope that these people could afford it, and that they were doing it to support us, and not to feed an addiction. But I strongly suspect that this is not the case.

We made a lot of money from these players who spent thousands. They are known to the industry as "Whales". Great. If you're rich, please be my guest. But we don't want this kind of money if it came from anyone who regrets their decision, if it made their lives significantly worse as a result. Unfortunately, those who have a problem are usually in denial about it, and would be too ashamed to ask us for a refund. We would give the refund in a heartbeat. It's not like we have artists drawing each ruby by hand. It costs us nothing but payment processing fees.

We really don't like making money off players who are in denial of their addiction. And that's what a large part of free-to-play gaming is all about. Everyone in the industry seems to rationalize it by shifting the blame, assuming way too much cognizance on the part of their victims. People can make their own decisions, right? But it just doesn't sit well with me. Despite very few of our players having complained, it felt wrong when we started doing it and it still feels wrong now.

That said, we're not going to change how we monetize Clicker Heroes 1. It would destroy our studio if we did. Most people are OK with how we've handled it. Our unlimited refund policy still stands. But going forward we're going to at least try the paid-up-front model for our business. It may or may not work. It probably isn't worth nearly as much money, but at least we can do it with a cleaner conscience.

Game design reasons
We want the experience to be good. The mere existence of real-money purchases puts an ugly cloud over the player's experience, with the persistent nagging feeling of "My game could be so much better if I just spent a few dollars". That alone feels terrible.

Also, if we have a real-money shop, we are limited to only rebalancing the game in ways that people who just spent money would approve of. People paid real money to get the current state of their game where it is at, and they've developed an expectation that it would be good for a long time. If we make changes to the game that are better for the game but *feel* worse for any one particular player at any stage of the game, we get backlash from that player. We've experienced this many times in the past. As a result, Clicker Heroes 1 is kind of a frankenstein of a game, our hands always having been tied by the fact that we couldn't easily change things that people paid for.

With Clicker Heroes 2, we plan to work on at least a few major updates without too much regard to player progress, similar to the way Dwarf Fortress, Rimworld, Factorio, and other games do. New updates can change the game to be incompatible with old saves (which will be rare, maybe once or twice a year), and there will be plenty of advance warning when it happens. Players then have the option to continue playing on the old version, or start fresh on the new version. To help make things more interesting, Clicker Heroes 2 is designed with multiple characters for you to choose from. So when you start fresh on one of these updates, you can play a different character, which will be a much different experience.

Also, we like games with mods and we want mods. Real-money shops make little sense with mods, when you can just download a mod to quadruple the number of rubies you get. Also, it is simply too easy to cheat. To facilitate modding, we would be giving lots of easy access to the source code, and very easy save editing.

Pre-orders
Final reason: Pre-orders don't make sense if a game is free-to-play. Pre-orders qualify for full refunds for up to a year after we launch: https://www.clickerheroes2.com/.

- Fragsworth
 

Zetor

Arcane
Joined
Jan 9, 2003
Messages
1,706
Location
Budapest, Hungary
Not sure if anyone heard about the OG 'clicker game' (wtf even is this subgenre) worth talking about (Make Number Go Up), but the sequel was released a month ago.

Succubox! The core 'gameplay' revolves around buying / opening lootboxes and exponential MMO grinding. It's not quite Frog Fractions, but...
 

Damned Registrations

Furry Weeaboo Nazi Nihilist
Joined
Feb 24, 2007
Messages
14,980
Idle games aren't really equivalent to progress quest though. Plenty of games have used idle mechanics over the years, including most RTS's with their auto resource gathering or games like Sim City. There are some pretty good idle games with a lot of depth to them.
 

LESS T_T

Arcane
Joined
Oct 5, 2012
Messages
13,582
Codex 2014
:necro:

Another drama: https://www.clickerheroes2.com/patent_trolls.php

Patent trolls are shaking us down for $35,000 for selling rubies in Clicker Heroes.
March 1, 2018

We (Playsaurus, developers of Clicker Heroes and Clicker Heroes 2) are getting shaken down by patent trolls for using "virtual currency" in our game.

GTX Corp., owners of U.S. Patent no. 7,177,838, claims that we're infringing on their patent for using "electronic tokens" (I assume they mean the rubies in Clicker Heroes).

They offered to let us pay a *bargain* $35,000 license fee to avoid "costly litigation". We were given 10 days to respond.

I believe their claims are completely meritless and their behavior to be abusive and terribly unethical. As I am a major owner of Playsaurus I see this as a personal attack, and the cost in my own time and well-being has already been significant and draining. It is a shame that the United States legal system can't provide a quick and easy way for us to punish them for these actions.

I believe it is unethical on our part to pay any negotiated amount, which serves to encourage the behavior of trolls with bogus claims. So, if pressed, we will take the matter to court and see it to the end. We have retained a law firm to assist and represent us if necessary. Playsaurus is a 100% privately owned organization, and we are not beholden to outside investors. We absolutely refuse to negotiate license fees with patent holders who make bogus claims.

You can see everything they sent to us in the PDFs below. I have also included our response, written by my good friend Miguel Bombach from Perkins Coie, describing to GTX how their claims are completely meritless.

The history of this patent (known as the '838 patent) is long. It was used by several different companies who owned it to shake down countless major institutions about 10 years ago. A more recent development is that they are threatening smaller companies (like Playsaurus) who typically don't have many resources. What they're asking for, $35,000, is about half a year of salary for one of our employees. I am concerned that they may be preying on a lot of other small studios, in a final attempt for them to profit off this bogus patent (which only has about 2 years left on it).

I believe they are targeting smaller organizations now, because recent developments in patent law have made bogus patents like these much easier to fight, but only if you have enough resources and money to properly prepare the legal challenges. If they were to go after larger organizations, the patent could easily be challenged. But smaller organizations like ours often can't afford to go through that process as easily.

A precursory search shows that there's a current lawsuit from GTX Corp. against Nekki (another game developer) for infringing on this same patent on February 8th. There is another lawsuit against Soccer Manager Ltd. I don't yet know any details of these cases.

I would like to hear from any other game developers who are also up against this problem, so that we could exchange any information we find and collaborate. I will freely discuss any information we or our lawyers discover that can be legally shared. Maybe we can help each other put an end to this. Please contact me at fragsworth@playsaurus.com.

Here is what they sent to us:
Here is our response:

In the meantime:



Skill trees inspired by Path of Exile to upgrade your clicks to multiple clicks, "big" click, and "huge" clicks

in-game macros that "play the game for you"

Z9D6a6L.gif



Well I guess I can understand there are people who enjoy these kind of "managerial" or "strategical" aspects in RPGs while actual actions are playing out themselves, but eh...
 

Lagi

Savant
Joined
Jul 19, 2015
Messages
726
Location
Desert
what idle games are "pretty good" ?

Zetor, one's are complete garbage. staring at numbers going up?!

i have played Overlod - you can finish it in 3h [it seems impossible at first], the formulas used are fucked up, but the idea is Ok. And Cookie Clicker - formulas are fine tuned, still time waste is horrible [like in Ogame, just the reward is faster].

Oh no, I'm starting to understand that games in general are waste of time. :0-13:
 

JarlFrank

I like Thief THIS much
Patron
Joined
Jan 4, 2007
Messages
33,048
Location
KA.DINGIR.RA.KI
Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
Idle games aren't really equivalent to progress quest though. Plenty of games have used idle mechanics over the years, including most RTS's with their auto resource gathering or games like Sim City. There are some pretty good idle games with a lot of depth to them.

The difference between Sim City and RTS games where resource gathering is automatic, and the typical idle game, is that in Sim City and those RTS games there actually is some gameplay.

In idle games there isn't. Waiting for numbers to go up and occasionally clicking your mouse is all you do. There's nothing else. You don't build road networks and place buildings, you don't build an army and have fights. You only click.
 

LESS T_T

Arcane
Joined
Oct 5, 2012
Messages
13,582
Codex 2014
I have limited experience with idle and clicker games, but I think many of them are not about clicking itself. Rather, it seems that it's about optimizing (or "minmaxing") clicks. You click things and gather resources, and choose some skills/upgrades/systems that optimize and even automate clicks by spending those resources.

Like RPGs focused on character progression system but everything else is replaced with clicks.
 

Ocelot

Learned
Joined
Feb 21, 2018
Messages
363
'member the time when Progress Quest was just a joke?

Remember when expansion packs actually expanded upon the base game? Or microtransactions and episodic gaming being bad jokes made by pessimist people?

Low Elf is the way to go, by the way.
 

MRY

Wormwood Studios
Developer
Joined
Aug 15, 2012
Messages
5,703
Location
California
what idle games are "pretty good" ?
I mean, there's a certain circularity here, but I thought "a dark room" was interesting.

(Circularity in that if a game is "pretty good," it's almost certainly because it's not truly an idle game.)
 

Damned Registrations

Furry Weeaboo Nazi Nihilist
Joined
Feb 24, 2007
Messages
14,980
In idle games there isn't. Waiting for numbers to go up and occasionally clicking your mouse is all you do. There's nothing else. You don't build road networks and place buildings, you don't build an army and have fights. You only click.
You'd be wrong on those accounts. Though I find some of the straight up number manipulators a lot more entertaining than a lot of the shitty civ/city/whatever management ones. Try this and tell me what you think- you'll understand my point within a minute or two of loading the game up, it's a fairly interesting optimization puzzle that you can play at various paces in various ways.
what idle games are "pretty good" ?
My short list would be Universal Paperclips (very new, finite length, well paced. Easily the best of the 'narrative' type games) Kittens Game (quite old and well developed, lots of interlocking mechanics and an insane variety of resources. I find it gets dull in the late game after you've unlocked kerosene) and Idling to Rule the Gods (also fairly new, lots of mechanics and different things to focus on, works well at various paces and has some active minigame stuff. None of these three require spam clicking anything for more than the first 20 clicks or so. After that it's all about making decisions to optimize things.

Honorable mentions go to Anti-Idle and Sandcastle Builder, both of which are fucking behemoths but require too much (tedious) active play for my liking. The former is a mess of minigames but mostly revolves around a sort of loot treadmill battle mode (though the card game isn't half bad either) while the latter is like some sort of autist's wet dream, with weird puzzles and progress so janky you won't be sure if you're cheating or not at times.

I could give dozens of examples of other idle/incremental games with some fairly interesting gameplay on some level or another, but most run out of content after a few days (or hours) and just kind of dangle there without an ending, or require ludicrous amounts of time to proceed.
 

LESS T_T

Arcane
Joined
Oct 5, 2012
Messages
13,582
Codex 2014
Even with my dislike of virtual money in games, I always support fight against patent trolls: https://www.clickerheroes2.com/patent_libel.php

Patent troll who demanded $35k from my game is now accusing me of libel
April 2, 2018

Follow us on twitter here. We will continue to post updates until this situation is resolved.

On February 20, 2018, GTX Corp. came after Playsaurus (developers of Clicker Heroes and Clicker Heroes 2) for patent infringement, demanding "a fully paid up license fee of $35,000" which GTX Corp. stated had to be secured "by the end of the ten (10) day period to avoid costly litigation". I subsequently wrote about their demands here. The purpose of my public post was to let the community at large know that smaller developers in the game industry were being threatened. I also wanted developers to know that they were not alone, that we could collaborate to legally defend against GTX Corp.'s demand, and that we could challenge GTX Corp.'s infringement claims and the validity of their patents.

Now, because of my post, GTX Corp. is accusing me of libel: "a false and unprivileged publication by writing, printing, picture, effigy, or other fixed representation to the eye, which exposes any person to hatred, contempt, ridicule, or obloquy, or which causes him to be shunned or avoided, or which has a tendency to injure him in his occupation."

Their libel accusation very much feels like an attempt to silence me and stifle my freedom to speak about this issue to keep us from discovering and revealing how many of us are receiving these letters. GTX Corp.'s behavior demanding "$35,000" to "avoid costly litigation" is bad enough already, but stifling a small game-developer's freedom of speech and our ability to mount a collaborative legal defense is a step too far. Fear of retaliation is one of many reasons smaller developers do not publicly talk about and defend against these demands. By being too scared to talk about this, the community would lose out on the positive potential of collaboration and on public awareness of these situations.

As much as GTX Corp. might not like it, I will continue to post publicly about this, so that we can continue to collaborate with other game developers as much as possible, and to provide a clear, transparent, and very public example of what actually comes of this kind of situation.

Beyond the libel claim, their new letter now claims that we induced Kongregate to infringe and use Kreds, despite the fact that Kongregate had Kreds for 6 years before we put Clicker Heroes on the site. They've also added a new patent to their claims, U.S. Pat. No. 7,328,189, which to me appears to be very similar to the '838 patent. Now they are claiming "the amount in controversy exceeds $75,000." The complete correspondence is below.

Notably, their new letter also drops all claims against Clicker Heroes client software, which proves that their original letter lacked merit. This brings up an important question. Ignoring the validity of the patent, which is its own separate issue:


How many game developers have been scared into, or are considering, paying GTX Corp. to avoid "costly litigation" for a patent that they do not even infringe?

Playsaurus will continue to fight against these allegations as well as collaborate with anyone else who is in the same situation. If GTX Corp. refuses to drop their claims, we are fully committed to having a judge or jury decide the merits of our case, whether before the United States Patent Office or in court.

If you are a game developer being threatened by GTX, we would love to hear from you. You can reach out to me directly at fragsworth@playsaurus.com or our patent lawyer Miguel Bombach MBombach@perkinscoie.com. We promise to keep your conversations confidential and will only publicly discuss your specific situation if you allow us to. Since my first posting, we already received many independent requests from game developers to collaborate. It is unclear exactly how many other developers have received similar demands from GTX Corporation.

Another way you can help is by finding prior art. Unified Patents is offering a $2,000 bounty to anyone who submits good prior art for patent no. 7,177,838, one of the patents that GTX is using. Submit your prior art for a chance to win!

PLEASE NOTE: There appear to be at least two "GTX Corporations". For clarification, I'm referring to the one in Arizona. There is a different one based in California that appears to be unrelated.

Here is what they sent to us:
Here is our response:

- Fragsworth

CEO, Playsaurus
 

LESS T_T

Arcane
Joined
Oct 5, 2012
Messages
13,582
Codex 2014
This is out now on Early Access:



Looks like initial sales are pretty good (#1 at Global Top Sellers at the moment).
 

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