I paid for my version and I saw a pop-up ad once when I first read about this last night. However, I haven't seen any since. I'd be curious to know whether those who got it free are seeing them frequently or not.
Was going to chime in but realized this was ios7 only so I'll have to pass on this. Oh well. This looked freemium at launch anyway. Thank goodness for the iOS barrier.
Yep, just saw that myself and came to post it. So don't think there should be worries about freemium. And again, I think I saw just one ad. Not sure what the deal was with that or if others are seeing them. Very nice Apple GoTW though. It's one of my Top 5 racers on iOS and thought it was a bargain at it's original $2.99 price (yes, there's IAPs, but never thought they were necessary -- just takes time to learn how to play the game effectively to win).
Looks and feels like a Freemium up front. Will need to delve deeper to get a better feel though. Not saying this is a Freemium model, but while I'm not a big fan of the "pay-to-play" model, I appreciate knowing up front what can be expected if a title is Freemium. If a developer isn't forthcoming with their Freemium model, I rather not invest the time in finding out.
From what I've played, and I've played a good bit, I haven't even considered paying for an IAP. It's tough at first, until you really master the style of drifting needed to win races. But once you catch on, you'll find it quite enjoyable. That's not to say that it isn't challenging, but it's the kind of game that if there were no IAPs, you couldn't say it was impossible to beat. It's just the kind of hard that makes it fun and rewarding once you win a race you struggled with at first. In fact, as others have mentioned in the main thread, even the cars don't necessarily have an advantage over one another, they just play differently. So you don't really have to buy every car in the game either.
I guess I was wrong in defending the game and thinking this was a great freebie. I paid launch price, $2.99 (yes, a good price for a good game), but it is a difficult game and could see where some may have thought the IAPs were necessary (I personally didn't). But now after playing it after the last update, it seems they've added timers to wait for "delivery" of cars you buy (that can be bypassed by a second rarer currency, which, of course can be bought with IAPs). And I'm just disappointed in another big publisher thinking it's okay to change to add freemium style elements into games that people paid for. I can deal with freemium up front, but the more devs that turn paid to freemium, the more I am getting tired of dealing with it. Thanks, Namco, for becoming another dev I can't trust. Edit: And now, I, as a paid customer AM getting full screen ads. Screw this.
Perfectly written. Big bummer seeing Namco doing this. I guess the devs want to make a few bucks at launch hype, but to give their loyal first buyers "The Porking" by tossing in ads, is ridiculous and just pisses people off and rightly so.
This type of crap is getting worse. I say we all download it and give it 1 star. This is why I mostly buy indie games because most of the well known indie devs are more trustworthy than the multimillion dollar corporations.
Well it was designed as a free to play game originally, they just removed some elements when they went with paid launch and put them back in the last update. It was inevitable really as it is another that just didn't sell well enough at an actual price point. Which, I suppose (personally), is the real sad part about it. Looking at its chart position now, they probably should have just stuck with the original plan. Funnily enough I'm getting a higher frequency of ads than others have mentioned. Seems to be every time I finish a race or select back or go to menu. Weblock sorts it out though and offline. (Clash of Clans must be spending a fortune on advertising.)
That chart position also likely reflects its prominent placement as Apple's App of the Week. That honestly makes this even more dispicable on Namco's part because it makes it look like Apple's giving it away for the week when in reality it certainly seems like they've changes it completely to freemium (based on the ads and timers added).
