Board Thread:Game Discussion/@comment-27798333-20160823073328/@comment-27824793-20160824145046

Sirebel,

But I am *not* missing your point!

I have said that I think FM's policy is massively unfair to those, like you, who have made an IAP. But "unfair" and "illegal" are two very different things.

The problem with your mobile phone analogy is that, once again, it uses the word "free" to describe the situation, and therefore it doesn't apply to what FM is doing. There is no "free" GC being offered. You have to spend 15-30 seconds of your time watching an ad to *earn* one GC.

Let's say it takes you seven minutes a day to watch 20 ads. That's 21 seconds per ad. I think my average is probably a bit longer since I seem to get more 30 second ads than 15 second ads. Whilst you may decide that it is worth spending 7 minutes of your time per day to get those 20 GC, those 7 minutes have a value. One of the attorneys I used on a deal charged $1,000 per hour. Taking 7 minutes of his time to watch ads instead of billing a client would cost him almost $120 of income. And watching ads to earn 1,000 GC would cost him close to $6,000 in billable hours. Even a minimum wage fast food worker earns almost a dollar in that 7 minutes, so $50 of his work time to earn the same 1,000 GC. So the argument could be made that buying 1000 GC for $19.95 is a bargain for even the minimum wage worker since the value of time is not equal to zero.

Is it "fair" to IAP makers? Not at all, IMO. Do IAP makers have any chance at getting FM to change their policy to increase their ad watching opportunities back to 20 per day by complaining to Google/Apple? IMO, no chance at all. But the complaining does create the possibility that FM reduces the number of ad watching opportunities for everyone.