As some of you are aware of by now, Rovio Classics: Angry Birds was delisted on Google Play after less than a year of being on the market. It will be renamed as "Red's First Flight" on iOS too, according to Brendan Sinclair over at GameIndustry.biz.
Rovio said, they have reviewed the business case of Rovio Classics: Angry Birds, and due to the game's impact on our wider games portfolio, we have decided that Rovio Classics: Angry Birds will be unlisted from the Google Play Store on Thursday, February 23." (2023)
Brendan assumes that they can't just pull it from iOS, so the name change is to prevent people from finding it, but no ladies & gentlemen, it's called "Red's First Flight" (enjoy!).
Clearly, the game has impacted the other games in their portfolio, but what does that say? How many people truly want all these microtransactions? For the classic to hit them to that degree, that says something, but... what will this latest move do to them?
Developers have to remember that gamers aren't just units, numbers, and dollar signs. Gamers keep the lights on and the doors of the studios open, we are people and we remember things, including those times when a developer left a bad taste in our mouth.
You can't play with someone's pocket, and at times someone will boycott for the sake of striking back over a decision that pissed them off. A beloved game was given to them, and stripped away... that shouldn't happen, regardless of how you slice it. There was another way to increase the monetization of the game if you need to make continuous coins off of a title per customer... but what you can't do is flip the script.
Once you make customers paranoid in terms of supporting you... or just too pissed off at you to continue their support, who can you blame? This is one to grow on regardless of the company. Beware!
Fun fact: I've conducted business that involved Rovio in the past (as a business development manager) for the sake of bringing Angry Birds game to the Nintendo 3DS (this was over a decade ago). So the thoughts came flooding back up (shout out to Peter V. who was running the show back then).
Anyway, check out the full article from Brendan Sinclair... here.
