OUYA Moving Away from Required Free-to-Try

[RiotingSpectre]

OUYA hasn't announced everything about this policy yet.

Which is one of the reasons why I(the biggest naysayer at the start of this thread) am now in a more neutral position.

[mhtraylor]

So, imagine you are an officer of some executive capacity at some large game company. At the moment, you're in the corporate jet leased to your company by another company for say $1, on whose board sits a former member of your executive board and current stock holder in your company. You're reading a WSJ op-ed other people like you paid to be written. The article is about why wages adjusted for inflation have been declining and the answer is because people are stupid enough to be born poor. Your attractive executive assistant massages your balls while you read, you know, because at this level the work day never really ends.

(I'm just setting the scene here, bear with me.)

"Talk to me!" you yell into your earpiece. You were just getting to the section of the article about the stupid, and your look of mirth changes to grim disappointment. It's the OUYA people on the other line. Again. "Look, we're not bringing over our nostalgic classic Super Mega Dude 4 that runs on an emulation layer and most people have bought seven times over on twelve different platforms to the OUYA. I know your users are just dying for it... I mean, sure, people will buy it an eighth time, but how many users do you--With the grain, dammit, WITH THE GRAIN!" You shoot an annoyed glance at your assistant. "Hmm, well, OUYA Everywhere is tempting... Your platform will be on smart TVs and urinals everywhere, you say? But about your demo requirement?" Your eyes narrow slyly as the other line goes silent. You're not thinking about the massage any more. This is bidness. "Let me get this straight, I'll have to PAY some of our guys to tack on a demo just to release to your store... with real MONEY?! You're crazy. Get back to me when you get rid of that free-to-try crap, and we'll think about bringing Super Monster Man 8X to the OUYA. Ciao."

That's how Free-to-Try got the boot. I know, I was there. In all seriousness, though, I'm guessing that some large, well-known mobile game companies with established "intellectual properties" who have been courted by OUYA simply don't want or don't care to incur any costs that would be required in making free-to-try rereleases of these games.

[Pat1986]

I'm guessing that some large, well-known mobile game companies with established "intellectual properties" who have been courted by OUYA simply don't want or don't care to incur any costs that would be required in making free-to-try rereleases of these games.

I didn't bought the OUYA for any AAA titles from big mobile game companies and second, if you're not d'accord with OUYAS house rules, than just stay out.

[Killswitch]

So, imagine you are an officer of some executive capacity at some large game company. At the moment, you're in the corporate jet leased to your company by another company for say $1, on whose board sits a former member of your executive board and current stock holder in your company. You're reading a WSJ op-ed other people like you paid to be written. The article is about why wages adjusted for inflation have been declining and the answer is because people are stupid enough to be born poor. Your attractive executive assistant massages your balls while you read, you know, because at this level the work day never really ends.

(I'm just setting the scene here, bear with me.)

"Talk to me!" you yell into your earpiece. You were just getting to the section of the article about the stupid, and your look of mirth changes to grim disappointment. It's the OUYA people on the other line. Again. "Look, we're not bringing over our nostalgic classic Super Mega Dude 4 that runs on an emulation layer and most people have bought seven times over on twelve different platforms to the OUYA. I know your users are just dying for it... I mean, sure, people will buy it an eighth time, but how many users do you--With the grain, dammit, WITH THE GRAIN!" You shoot an annoyed glance at your assistant. "Hmm, well, OUYA Everywhere is tempting... Your platform will be on smart TVs and urinals everywhere, you say? But about your demo requirement?" Your eyes narrow slyly as the other line goes silent. You're not thinking about the massage any more. This is bidness. "Let me get this straight, I'll have to PAY some of our guys to tack on a demo just to release to your store... with real MONEY?! You're crazy. Get back to me when you get rid of that free-to-try crap, and we'll think about bringing Super Monster Man 8X to the OUYA. Ciao."

That's how Free-to-Try got the boot. I know, I was there. In all seriousness, though, I'm guessing that some large, well-known mobile game companies with established "intellectual properties" who have been courted by OUYA simply don't want or don't care to incur any costs that would be required in making free-to-try rereleases of these games.

This might be how it happened but it's the WAY it was announced. If people knew this was coming and from who or why or even a little more than what they were given, there would be much less outrage from the consumer side. Instead it looks like this idea came out of nowhere and was dropped on people. I heard it on one of those hangout vids so I knew it was coming but had no clue it would be this soon after that video. It's like announcing OUYA Everywhere and you think it'll be months or whatever but it was instant with MOJO, not that anyone cares about MOJO but when it's done in this fashion it looks like knee jerk reactions.

Usually when you plan to go somewhere you follow the rules. If I have a no shoes in the house policy, you would make sure you have nice crispy socks and take off the shoes right? I shouldn't have to bend to let you into MY place.

[xAD]

Entitled. It's true.

Consumers are entitled to know what they are buying before they pay for it. Devs are not entitled to our money, no matter how hard they worked on their product already, or how much its "artistic integrity" might suffer.

There was a time when demos were mostly impossible to deliver. During that time, games were simple enough that you could tell with great accuracy what they were just by a screen shot. Not any more on either count.

Maybe the folks at OUYA felt this decision was unavoidable. Maybe it was. But it isn't good, regardless.

[arcticdog]

I was lied to... where can I return my Ouya for a full refund?
If they ever release the Ouya2 they have just lost one of their best selling features and set themselves up to fail even quicker.

Every company has to make hard decisions. Free to try was a company goal that didn't work out.
You weren't lied to. There was no written guarantee anywhere that said the games would be "free to try" forever. It's a little surprising they made the decision this early, but they're a small company and able to react quickly.

Let me tell you a personal story...
I was an early developer backer at a tier that set me back WAY more than $99. As one of these backers, I was "promised" our games would be promoted for a year beyond the release. Being discovered in an app store is a huge part of the battle, so this was an attractive thing to have for a studio like my own that doesn't have a track record yet. For those with good intentions, releasing a high value game in a prominent spot can open the door to a lot of opportunities and better games for your customers in the future.

It turns out that THIS particular "promise" was merely a line of apps in the Discover area that was labeled "Our Founders". You probably saw it. Is $700+ for the early dev kit + the development of the game + basically being a guinea pig for their firmware and weird controller bugs worth the price?

I'd say no. I might even say that "promise" was a lie. To even get into that "Our Founders" area, we had to get out of the sandbox (RIP) just like everyone else. So much for guaranteed promotion, right? Yeah. I was annoyed to learn that.

But you know what? It turns out that in order to have a quality store, games should be discovered by their own merits and by how much the developer promotes it. Not a forced promotion or buy-in. As a result, OUYA promotes ANY developer that brings a decent title to the platform regardless if they were a founding member or not. Does this screw some of the original developer backers who were promised more exposure? Most certainly it does. But I am sure you've looked at the "Our Founders" section and can judge for yourself how many of those games actually deserve to be front and center based on quality versus seniority.

So changes happen. You can certainly view them as "lies" if you want to. But they were company goals and policies. Not anchors. There is another side of consumers that maybe aren't as vocal in this forum (but shouldn't be mistaken for a minority vote) that just want the games and aren't so worried about the demos. Why are they less important? Because they don't complain as loudly? They do complain though. If you watch OUYA's other areas of communication with these customers, you see that they ask for these games. OUYA has no control over developer schedules, nor do they possess the Jedi mind trick to persuade them to develop by suggestion.

And persuasion is the key here. Contrary to some belief, I don't think any developers "whined" to OUYA at all about this change. Developers have plenty of platforms to choose from. To whine means, they threw a tantrum to persuade them to lower the bar to get the privilege and opportunity to develop for the OUYA platform. I can nearly guarantee that didn't happen. In other words, OUYA asked developers to make the games their customers wanted. Those developers said no. That could have been the end of it, but I'm sure OUYA wanted to know why, and I'm sure the response was, "we develop premium games, and have had no need to modify this given none of the other platforms we support require it. We don't have to put the additional resources in to sell them where they are. Can you justify the time we take to make a decent demo in terms of sales?" Short of OUYA paying for that development themselves (and who knows.. they might have for some of the bigger title's we've seen), the return on investment is very low here.

As OUYA, if you have to deliver bad news to your users all the time such as "sorry, this dev has no interest", those customers start to lose faith in the system as well. Lets look at that sector of users for a minute. They're the ones who want these premium games, which by definition means they're willing to PAY for them if they're asking for them. If the demo isn't required, OUYA gets paid. Developer gets paid with minimal changes. Users requesting the game get the game they asked for.

I'm sure OUYA got tired of having to hear how the platform is weak on content by customers who bought it for content (not the droves who claim to use it for emulation/XBMC only). Sure.. Free to Try was a differentiator. If a "differentiator" differentiates you by making you a weaker company (i.e. you need content on a system that highly depends on content for revenue), it's a bad way to differentiate. It will rocket you to bankruptcy. Maybe a store that mixes premium and free to play is the BASE you have to start at to compete at all, and try to differentiate from there. Maybe Apple, Microsoft, Google, etc all do this for a reason. It's certainly not collusion if you know how competitive these companies are with one another on this front.

Just something to think of. Of course, you're entitled to feel like you've been lied to. But I think that takes it far more personally than it is or intended. It could be worse.. you could be out $100's more than $99 + games/extra controllers.

Thanks, arcticdog. I wish I was so articulate and could get my point across as well. You said pretty much everything I was trying to say and more.

<schiz's essay>

Thanks for the kind words.

I've decided to come out of lurking to speak on this particular issue because I see a lot of what's going on here to be harmful to the community and maybe OUYA itself. Developers and consumers are on the same side, even if they're on opposite ends of the transaction, and that needs to be clear. Even the ones who want to make premium content. Both want a mutually satisfying platform for entertainment delivery and consumption. I think a lot of people are interpreting this policy change as a move away from free to try entirely. But its not. And to think the policy switch is going to make that happen by deceptive developers just doesn't jive with the trends at other app stores where this option has existed for awhile.

Schiz.. I'm glad you're sort of seeing it from another perspective. Here's another thing to consider..
Take "Flappy Bird" for instance. Suppose you're the developer of that and you're getting asked everywhere to put it on the OUYA. Also consider that you have a version of your game on Google Play, iOS, and Windows Phone. You make $30,000+ a day on ad revenue. Sure.. people dislike ads, perhaps more than premium, but it makes a ton of money for you. In fact, you don't even need to port to OUYA, but you want to because people have asked, and Bawb looks like Harry Potter. Being a Harry Potter fan, you look into it. OUYA, because of low adoption (so you've read by the hater press), is going to be value ad at best or an expression of good will. But you don't want to lose money on the port. But if you can make it available with little hassle, why not? Otherwise, you'd rather be working on your next big hit, building from your fame and success. You decide even though OUYA can't hope to make you $30,000 on the day you set aside to develop for it, you begin doing what you need to do instead of working on the next big thing.

You consider your own success so far. Flappy Bird is so well known, everyone has played it somewhere already, has seen a video, has heard their friends talk about it, etc. The mechanics are so simple, someone can practically play the game in their head without even seeing it, and anyone asking for it on OUYA probably knows how it will play on the OUYA controller.

OUYA currently doesn't have an ad-supported strategy, so a direct port isn't possible. But they do have a premium strategy. This means you can just rip a few lines of code out that makes up the ad serving portion, post the APK as a premium game for 99 cents and the game is ready to be evaluated by OUYA in about 2 hours worth of effort, including your own testing.

Lets say OUYA decided to stick to their "promise" and require Flappy Bird to have a demo. Where do you begin to do that? Do you make it timed? Do you limit by score? Do you limit how many times you can flap? What?
Suddenly, you're basically writing a brand new game around an imposed limitation designed to make a sale. It doesn't really make the decision to buy this game easier or harder. Let's pick it apart more based on the strategies mentioned above.

Timed? Now you've created a free game where people can try to see how high they can score in the allotted time limit. Damn. You should have saved that for the sequel.
What if you only allowed the game to be played so many times a day (ala Canabalt or that rhythm Double Fine game that escapes me), or a total time (ala Bomb Squad). These are highly imperfect methods. You can track how much time is being spent on a server somewhere, but then you're imposing a DRM'ish situation for a demo. What you're left with is local storage. And well.. if you don't know why that doesn't work, you can contact me outside of here and I'll tell you.

Limit By Score? What's the magic number that ends the game? I've seen people who can score 50 points on Flappy Bird with their eyes closed, maybe on their first try. In my brief and easily bored experience, I couldn't get past a score of 7 or 8. Some can't even score 1 or 2 points.

So if you make the magic score too high, you've basically made a free game for everyone that has a difficult time reaching that number since they'll never get there.
If you make it too low, you've given no indication how much harder the game gets. You can't even "compress" that by amping up the difficulty faster in the demo, because you give the indication that it gets too difficult too quickly.

Flap limit? Now you've created a new game for free that allows people to test to see how much they can score in as few flaps as possible.

Honestly, at this point, after putting in all the code to experiment with all of these limiting options, you're still not sure. You've now spent way more time on this than you wanted to, for a platform that's not making you any money yet. You can't even release it for "free" without modifying the game to remove ads. Meanwhile, you've got users who want support on the other platforms that are making money. Johnny User says it doesn't work on Nexus 7, and you know how to fix that. But you've been wrapped up in the OUYA port. You decide OUYA's just not worth it, and it's already losing you money by stealing your attention away from where you're making money.

On the bright side, you have a bunch of ideas for the sequel(s).

I know.. Flappy Bird is probably the kind of game that many of us here do not want on the platform. This was just an example. Maybe a bad one. But I've seen the developer's twitter feed to know that there were at least a couple of people asking for it on OUYA. This doesn't account for non-visible things like private messages, emails, etc.

Basically what I've discovered in my own journey of game development is, you need to PLAN to make a demo and make it part of the design. Sort of how movie directors plan or sometimes shoot footage specifically for their trailers and nothing else. I don't think there are many developers that do that, or feel right about doing it, and it ends up being a very burdensome after thought to do it. You can almost tell which games in discover were premium games in other stores and had a demo slapped on them for OUYA. Some give away too much. Some give away too little.

The biggest problem with free to try.. and this is probably the BIGGEST issue.. Is that for every developer that wants to hide behind a paywall and release crap, there are many MANY more "customers" that do not use the demos as a "try before you buy" experience as many are claiming here. They use it as a "lite" game experience. The demo itself is enough of a game for them.

It can also go the other way. If I know what portion of my game really has to shine to get that sale, I can go out of my way to make the demo fantastic, even though the rest of the game is buggy, repetitive, graphics at later stages you don't see are lower in quality because of time/budget, etc. You could have just as well bought the premium edition, where the budget for the game went into the game. Not the game + some crippled version of it attempting to give you experience that convinces you to buy it.

Developers have had to go through the effort of writing a demo with the intent to stimulate a sale, and it backfires. Assuming a user doesn't abuse it too much, I'm sure OUYA would give some limited number of refunds for the inconvenience of a bad game if the developer his/herself won't/can't. And if that's not on the table, the user can smear that developer a number of ways through word of mouth, giving it a bad rating, public humiliation via facebook/twitter.. etc. The sky is the limit. The developer who gives away too much of their time and money to craft a demo, and either accidentally drives a customer away, or gives them too much for free, has almost no recourse at all. You can't usually take those experiences back to correct them if they're bad. You can't get compensated if you give too much away. You can't call a customer a leeching a-hole because you just don't treat any customer that way no matter how true it may actually be. And few customers are willing to give games a lot of evaluation time because there are so many choices out there.

Premium games aren't inherently bad or necessarily trying to hide some sort of flaw. That's the picture that many here have been trying to paint. Sometimes it's just not worth the effort to slap on a badly done demo because it won't achieve its goal, either by the effort it takes, or the attempt gets botched. Few get a chance for redemption on a bad demo. A kick-ass trailer is so much easier to make and doesn't require any programming or nearly as much time. As I sort of implied before.. I've found that a good demo really is a separate product that happens to share some code in common with the game itself. As such, it needs a whole different aspect of testing and development along side the game itself.
It really does slow down the development process. If done well, it's possibly worth it. In that case it's a loss leader like cheap toilet paper at Walmart. You lose money on the demo, but it makes you money on the sale of the game. In other cases, it's merely a loss, like a grocery store serving tainted meat on sample day. How many mom and pop stores in your town (which would be like an average indie) ever use loss leaders?

I better get back to writing the game stuff...

This is wordy enough except for one last thing. "Demos. Not that hard.".. Nothing is hard when you don't have the experience to know why it is or isn't in every scenario, or have to take on the expense or effort of doing it.
And quite frankly, if one doesn't value artistic integrity, I'm sure they're not that developer's customer anyway. So it works out great. If you want games to be a commodity product, that's fine. But that doesn't mean other customers value artistic direction less and should be left out because a few lack confidence in their own ability to judge a game based on other forms of review.

edit: one more.. couldn't resist..

Usually when you plan to go somewhere you follow the rules. If I have a no shoes in the house policy, you would make sure you have nice crispy socks and take off the shoes right? I shouldn't have to bend to let you into MY place

Or.. maybe you invited me in, but your house smells like cat urine. I politely decline. You ask why because you desperately want my company.. I decide it serves you well to be honest with you.
You decide to clean the cat box. Suddenly a bunch of other people who've declined before no longer decline as well.

Point being.. your rules are irrelevant if you want MY company. There are limits to be sure. But the rules aren't necessarily one sided.

[xAD]

Take "Flappy Bird" for instance. Suppose you're the developer of that and you're getting asked everywhere to put it on the OUYA. Also consider that you have a version of your game on Google Play, iOS, and Windows Phone. You make $30,000+ a day on ad revenue. Sure.. people dislike ads, perhaps more than premium, but it makes a ton of money for you. In fact, you don't even need to port to OUYA, but you want to because people have asked, and Bawb looks like Harry Potter. Being a Harry Potter fan, you look into it. OUYA, because of low adoption (so you've read by the hater press), is going to be value ad at best or an expression of good will. But you don't want to lose money on the port. But if you can make it available with little hassle, why not? Otherwise, you'd rather be working on your next big hit, building from your fame and success. You decide even though OUYA can't hope to make you $30,000 on the day you set aside to develop for it, you begin doing what you need to do instead of working on the next big thing.

You consider your own success so far. Flappy Bird is so well known, everyone has played it somewhere already, has seen a video, has heard their friends talk about it, etc. The mechanics are so simple, someone can practically play the game in their head without even seeing it, and anyone asking for it on OUYA probably knows how it will play on the OUYA controller.

OUYA currently doesn't have an ad-supported strategy, so a direct port isn't possible. But they do have a premium strategy. This means you can just rip a few lines of code out that makes up the ad serving portion, post the APK as a premium game for 99 cents and the game is ready to be evaluated by OUYA in about 2 hours worth of effort, including your own testing.

Lets say OUYA decided to stick to their "promise" and require Flappy Bird to have a demo. Where do you begin to do that? Do you make it timed? Do you limit by score? Do you limit how many times you can flap? What?
Suddenly, you're basically writing a brand new game around an imposed limitation designed to make a sale. It doesn't really make the decision to buy this game easier or harder. Let's pick it apart more based on the strategies mentioned above.

Timed? Now you've created a free game where people can try to see how high they can score in the allotted time limit. Damn. You should have saved that for the sequel.
What if you only allowed the game to be played so many times a day (ala Canabalt or that rhythm Double Fine game that escapes me), or a total time (ala Bomb Squad). These are highly imperfect methods. You can track how much time is being spent on a server somewhere, but then you're imposing a DRM'ish situation for a demo. What you're left with is local storage. And well.. if you don't know why that doesn't work, you can contact me outside of here and I'll tell you.

Limit By Score? What's the magic number that ends the game? I've seen people who can score 50 points on Flappy Bird with their eyes closed, maybe on their first try. In my brief and easily bored experience, I couldn't get past a score of 7 or 8. Some can't even score 1 or 2 points.

So if you make the magic score too high, you've basically made a free game for everyone that has a difficult time reaching that number since they'll never get there.
If you make it too low, you've given no indication how much harder the game gets. You can't even "compress" that by amping up the difficulty faster in the demo, because you give the indication that it gets too difficult too quickly.

Flap limit? Now you've created a new game for free that allows people to test to see how much they can score in as few flaps as possible.

Honestly, at this point, after putting in all the code to experiment with all of these limiting options, you're still not sure. You've now spent way more time on this than you wanted to, for a platform that's not making you any money yet. You can't even release it for "free" without modifying the game to remove ads. Meanwhile, you've got users who want support on the other platforms that are making money. Johnny User says it doesn't work on Nexus 7, and you know how to fix that. But you've been wrapped up in the OUYA port. You decide OUYA's just not worth it, and it's already losing you money by stealing your attention away from where you're making money.

The five minutes of wasted thought it took the developer likely bankrupted him! Still, there you go. Another perfect example of why removing the demo requirement isn't helping anyone.

Now, if you can spin me a believable yarn about a game that would be wonderfully successful in the OUYA ecosystem, if only that "unreasonable" demo requirement were gone, then maybe I'll reconsider. As is, I still believe the convenience of leaving the demo out only helps the lazy and the crooked.

[Hydrus]

OUYA must be gouging their eyes trying to keep up with this thread.

[arcticdog]

The five minutes of wasted thought it took the developer likely bankrupted him! Still, there you go. Another perfect example of why removing the demo requirement isn't helping anyone.

Now, if you can spin me a believable yarn about a game that would be wonderfully successful in the OUYA ecosystem, if only that "unreasonable" demo requirement were gone, then maybe I'll reconsider. As is, I still believe the convenience of leaving the demo out only helps the lazy and the crooked.

Perhaps you'll see those games coming soon enough. This is a business transaction. Nobody is holding a gun to your head forcing you to buy something without a demo, so nobody should hold a gun to a developers head and say they must provide one. You will just play in different worlds, and that's okay.

But I will tell you it's an even bigger waste of time trying to change the mind of someone who has their heels dug in with no intention of ever seeing a reason why there might be some worth in an opinion that opposes theirs. Some are stubborn just to be stubborn, myopic in their view, and angry because the world isn't moving the way they want it to. I'm sure you've dealt with the type before., right? I can fully appreciate that you may not value a devil's advocate view. It's not everyone's bag.

In case you missed it, I am on the pro-demo side myself. But I'm not so bent on developing cancer over believing that it must be a mandatory policy or OUYA is practicing witchcraft if it's crippling the business in other ways. Nor do I think someone's omission of a demo somehow labels them lazy or a crook. There are so many reasons to hate the average person based on their personality, that you don't need to even go to a depth that shallow. Seriously.

Plus it's not just about how this issue affects me personally. It's how it affects everyone wholly. That scope extends well beyond myself and others who are inconvenienced by a few apps here and there that fail to deliver a demo. To fully understand this requires some empathy. And to be honest, if I were a premium content developer, I'd kinda be glad the guy that thinks I'm lazy/crooked when I'm not isn't my customer.

Smart businesses run on utilitarian principles. A door or two may close as a result of a decision, but if it opens dozens more, then it's not necessarily a bad loss.

If anything, hopefully this policy change will help you appreciate those that actually go through the trouble of making a demo, whether it's at OUYA or any other competing platform. Because whether you want to believe it or not, there IS effort involved to do it right that yields fair results on both sides of the transaction. But again, empathy. You need to put yourself on both sides to see it.

If I bought a toaster that claimed to make toast on the box and then one day it stopped toasting would it still be a toaster or just be a place to hold bread? Why would I bother keeping it as a place to hold bread if the primary reason I bought it was to make toast?

Your OUYA isn't fundamentally defective because some games that require an up front purchase are now being allowed into the store.

So to correct your scenario.. Your toaster still toasts bread. But there's a new kind of bread that (unfortunately) only warms up when you put it in the toaster. As long as you avoid that new bread, it's still useful. Though, on occasion, you might find that some versions of that warm bread may be worth the price based on the opinion of friends.

[xAD]

Perhaps you'll see those games coming soon enough. [no reason given]

But I will tell you it's an even bigger waste of time trying to change the mind of someone who has their heels dug in with no intention of ever seeing a reason why there might be some worth in an opinion that opposes theirs. [another character attack and still no reason]

Plus it's not just about how this issue affects me personally. It's how it affects everyone wholly. That scope extends well beyond myself and others who are inconvenienced by a few apps here and there that fail to deliver a demo. To fully understand this requires some empathy. And to be honest, if I were a premium content developer, I'd kinda be glad the guy that thinks I'm lazy/crooked when I'm not isn't my customer.

Smart businesses run on utilitarian principles. A door or two may close as a result of a decision, but if it opens dozens more, then it's not necessarily a bad loss.

If anything, hopefully this policy change will help you appreciate those that actually go through the trouble of making a demo, whether it's at OUYA or any other competing platform. Because whether you want to believe it or not, there IS effort involved to do it right that yields fair results on both sides of the transaction. But again, empathy. You need to put yourself on both sides to see it.

Plus it's not just about how this issue affects me personally. It's how it affects everyone wholly. That scope extends well beyond a few developers who feel inconvenienced by a requirement to deliver a demo. To fully understand this requires some empathy for the plight of the consumer. And to be honest, if I were a premium content developer, I'd probably be indoctrinated into the "bleed as many of them of as much money as possible with the least possible effort" mindset, too.

Business have for too long run on nothing but utilitarian principles. The phrase "it's just business" should not excuse the screwing over of customers (or employees) the way it does. Not, to jump back into perspective, that the loss of demos is even one of the major ways consumers are getting worked over - but it is a step backwards. A step backwards taken to gain...what? Businesses run on utilitarian principles, and the yes effort but relatively minuscule amount of effort required to produce a demo is not going to be the tipping point of a deal where the numbers are good.