Hi, JudasFm,

I cannot address all of your concerns here, but I can give some background on a few things you mentioned...

LDW started as a mobile game developer (back in 2002 - remember Palm and Pocket PC devices?) starting with a series of casino games and moving into Little Pocket Pet, Fish Tycoon, and Plant Tycoon (all on mobile). The VV series actually began on mobile - a game called Village Sim for Palm OS devices - in 2005, three years before Apple opened their iTunes App Store to developers. We expanded that game and released it as Virtual Villagers: A New Home for PC and Mac, but the core of VV1 is Village Sim. That game, and the earlier release of Fish Tycoon on PC and Mac, marked our move away from those early mobile devices and solidly into desktop casual games.

It's been a while since Arthur's post on the effects of the proliferation of mobile devices on LDW and our development choices, but I can tell you that the gaming landscape has continued the trend toward mobile and so-called free to play games. Pretty much everything he said 4 years ago applies even more today. We stayed with desktops games as long as we could. We know how many of you still love to play PC games, and we didn't take the decision lightly to, once again, focus on mobile.

Arthur's comments about being "saved" by mobile were true then, and they're true now. The simple fact is that not enough people buy desktop games to keep the lights on at LDW. With every new PC game we released, sales were lower and trickled off to near nothing sooner than the game before. Also, we're still pretty much the same size now as we were years ago.

Mobile has enabled us to keep making games instead of riding off into the sunset, like so many other indie developers have done. We've really tried to make sure that we're not like the developers who "bleed people dry" through in-app purchases. Our goal is to give people games that they can play and enjoy without feeling exploited. For example, our VV series was released on mobile with free versions that had no IAPs; the only limitation was tribe size, but the entire game could be played the same as the paid versions. VV:O had IAPs that added fun features, but didn't require IAPs to play the entire game.

We know that there will always be people who absolutely loathe the current trend in mobile gaming, and you will never see us defending some of the exploitation we see out there. However, for us, it's either make games that fit with today's market, or stop making games altogether. It's simple arithmetic.