Game Developer Abandons Android App Citing Unsustainability
The company behind the popular Battleheart game for Google's Android operating system are ceasing support for the platform citing that the platform is unsustainable in the long term.
In a blog post, Mika Mobile said:
 We spent about 20% of our total man-hours last year dealing with Android in one way or another - porting, platform specific bug fixes, customer service, etc.
I would have preferred spending that time on more content for you, but instead I was thanklessly modifying shaders and texture formats to work on different GPUs, or pushing out patches to support new devices without crashing, or walking someone through how to fix an installation that wouldn't go through.
We spent thousands on various test hardware. These are the unsung necessities of offering our apps on Android. Meanwhile, Android sales amounted to around 5% of our revenue for the year, and continues to shrink. Needless to say, this ratio is unsustainable.
Clearly there is an economic argument here as the company state clearly that they're not making money, at least not from this one game.
Their problem however is exacerbated by the fact that Android has become such a fractured platform for them, and updates to the OS are coming so quickly that they're spending too much time updating existing titles to keep them working. This is cutting into the time they want to spend developing new titles instead.
This raises an interesting question as it should be a simple matter of writing an app and putting it on sale. This, after all is what happens on iOS and what will happen for Windows 8. These two platforms are very different from Android though for quite significant reasons. With Windows 8 all the cross-compatibility work is done by the compiler, which is something Microsoft worked very hard on, and the main operating system itself will not be updated for another three years. In the case of iOS very little changes and with the new iPad coming next month with it's higher resolution screen, all upscaling of apps will be handled by the operating system seamlessly in the background.
Under the hood of both of these platforms everything is stable and nothing changes. Android however is suffering from the fragmentation that being open-source has brought to some Linux distributions with even the creator of Gnome admitting last year that each new distro of the kernel is "breaking APIs all the time".
In no small part Android is becoming a victim of its own success. It is nowhere near as tightly controlled as either iOS or Windows 8 with individual hardware makers able to add their own elements to the OS. This creates device-specific versions of Android, with good examples being the Amazon Kindle Fire and the HTC Flyer, that software makers have to check application compatibility with.
So is this the beginning of a slippery slope for Android? It is possible that we could eventually find ourselves in a position where tablets begin to crash as software houses write apps that will run on one version of the OS on most tablets but not on one or two specific machines. It is also possible that many apps will come with a list of supported devices before you buy or download them, and with advice not to update the firmware for risk of breaking the app.
It will be interesting to hear what you think on this. Do you think Android is unsustainable or do you believe the open-source approach is simply superior to the closed-development that Apple and Microsoft bring to their platforms? Why not tell us in the comments below.
Thanks for the tip Martin.
It is for these kinds of posts that I follow GHacks.
What’s up with the generic comment, are you a bot?
2G?
Where on the planet is that still in use? I was forced to give up using my RAZRV3 years ago because 2G was phased out by AT&T.
Everywhere 3G has been turned off and you don’t have LTE coverage, and believe me there are many developed countries where this is the case and if it weren’t for 2G you wouldn’t even be able to make a phone call.
Maybe I missed it, but I don’t believe tha term “2G” is in the article. Perhaps you are referring to “AGM G2”??
@Martin
Your website has gone insane.
When I the post button I then saw my comment posted on a different article page. When I opened this article again, it is here.
@Tachy @Martin Brinkmann
” Your website has gone insane. ”
Same here. Has happened several times.
@Tachy,
@Martin P.,
For over two weeks now,
I’ve been seeing “Comments” posted by subscribers appearing in different, unrelated articles.
https://www.ghacks.net/windows-11-update-stuck-fixed-for-good/#comment-4572991
https://www.ghacks.net/windows-11-update-stuck-fixed-for-good/#comment-4572951
For the time being,
it would be better to specify the “article name and URL” at the beginning of the post.
@tachy a lot of non-phone devices with a sim in them rely on 2G, at least here in europe.
Usually things reporting usage or errors/alarms on something remote that does not get day to day inspection in person. They are out there in vast numbers doing important work. Reliable, good range. The low datarate is no problem at all in those cases.
3G is gone or on its last legs everywhere, but this stuff still has too much use to cancel.
Anyhow, interesting that they would put that in. I can see the point if you suspect a hostile 2G environment (amateur eavesdroppers with laptop, ranging up to professional grade MITM fake towers while “strangely” not getting the stronger crypto voip 4G because it is being jammed, and back down to something as old ‘stingray’ devices fallen into the wrong hands).
But does this also mean that they have handled and rolled out a fix for that nasty 4G ‘pwn by broadcast’ problem you reported earlier this year? I had 4G disabled due to that, on the off chance that some of the local criminals would buy some cheap chinese gear, download a working exploit and probe every phone in range all over town in the hope of getting into phones of the police.
>”While most may never be attacked in stingrays, it is still recommended to disable 2G cellular connections, especially since it does not have any downsides.”
The downside would be losing connectivity. I spend a lot of time way out in the countryside where there’s often no service or almost none. My network allows 2G, and I need it sometimes. I have an option on the phone to disable 2G, I may do that when I’m in the city and I have good 5G connectivity, but not out in the country.
I would imagine that the stingray exploits, like most of the bad things in this world, are probably things you will run into in the crowded big cities.
I stopped using it in a mobile (Wi-Fi line) environment, so I’m almost ignorant of the actual situation,
But the recent reality in Japan makes me realize that “the infrastructure of the web is nothing more than a papier-mâché fiction”.
https://www.ghacks.net/2023/08/17/google-chrome-to-enable-https-first-by-default-for-all-users/#comment-4572402
It is already beyond the scope of what an individual can do.
What we should be aware of is the reality that “governments and those in power want to control the world through the Web”, and efforts to counter (resist and prevent) such ambitions are necessary.
Why do you want people to disable the privacy features? Hmmmmm?
Now You: do you plan to keep the Ads privacy features enabled?
I’d like to tell you, but apparently if you make a post critical of Google, you get censored. * [Editor: removed, just try to bring your opinion across without attacking anyone]
@Martin
You website is still psychotic. Comments attach to random stories.
@Martin please do fix the comments, it’s completely insane commenting here! :[
@Martin
The comments are seriously messed up on gHacks now. These comments are mixed with the article at the below URL.
https://www.ghacks.net/2023/08/18/android-how-to-disable-2g-cellular-connections-to-improve-security/
And comments on other articles are from as far back as 2010.
What does this article has anything to do with all the comments on this article? LOL I think this Websuite is ran by ChatGPT. every article is messed up. Some older comments from 2015 shown up in recant articles, LOL
The picture captioned “Clearing the Android Auto’s cache might resolve the issue” is from Apple Carplay ;)
How about other things that matter:
Drop survival?
Screen toughness?
Degree of water and dust protection?