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I encourage all of you to stop paying for the daily Gem Letter. Here’s why:
1. It seems like a cheap way to get enough gems for reasonable play, but it means you are paying around a hundred dollars a year to play a “free” game. Are there any other games you pay this kind of money to play?
2. It tells Rovio that you are willing to pay to play, so they move to the next step of figuring out just how much you are willing to pay. If you keep paying at a higher level, they know there is more money to make on you, so they keep piling it on. They increase the effective cost of gems by devaluation – you have to pay more gems per continue. They make the physics unpredictable so that skill matters less, and paying to continue is the only sure way to win.
3, The single greatest reason for Rovio’s financial success was the introduction of hard currency, aka gems, into the game. Players can’t win enough gems to make a difference so they are willing to pay actual money to get this “play money” to use in the game. Rovio experienced a huge increase in revenues when they introduced this element. Now the revenue has plateaued or even decreased so they are desperate to increase it. The past boom wasn’t seen as a windfall but as the new normal, so stock price, salaries, everything went up. Rovio HAS to find ways to get more money out of an aging game. Hence the skewing of bird power, cost of replays, cheating in physics to pry more gems out of the players. The only way to reverse the trend is to not reward the tactics. I don’t know what percentage of revenue comes from ads, Gem letter sales, and other gem purchases but the Letter must be significant. If everyone who gets even one KPP as a requirement for the DQs would not buy the next month’s letter it would send a message – the only kind of message Rovio listens to.
Can Rovio find an acceptable level of revenue, were enough employees are making enough money, and enjoy the work enough to stay at a steady state? Or will corporate greed win out, to the point where they destroy the long term revenue potential in exchange for short term profits? Does the current management make enough in bonuses for higher revenues that they don’t care about destroying the future earnings- they are planning to take the money and run? Do forcasts indicate that the game revenues are on an irreversible decline, so they are just trying to get every penny they can before they fold? I don’t know. But I say, let’s test them back. If the game is on the skids, it will collapse no matter what we do. If this is just a play for another magical bumpto the next level of revenue, we might be able to influence the outcome. STOP PAYING THE GEM LETTER, STOP BUYING GEMS TO CONTINUE AN UNFAIR LEVEL. And write them and tell them what you are doing and why.
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