If you’ve been playing my games lately, you probably came across this confusing message. Let me explain what’s happening and if you have to be worried that my games are going away.

Short answer:
No, you do not have to worry about anything. My games aren’t going anywhere, this matter is completely irrelevant to the games. You can sigh in relief.

Longer answer:

Yep, times are changing, again. This time – significantly, and for the worse, which will become better in time. Bare with me, I’ll explain everything. Again – don’t worry. This message above is a fallout of Mochiads going out of business and closing it’s services rather abruptly. What is Mochiads, you ask? It’s an in-game advertisement provider (all those ads that could be seen inside the game screen when game is loading). I’ve been a partner of Mochi since the beginning in June 2007. As I remember it was still in Beta at the time. And now they’re closing it’s services and are notifying you that ads are no more, and free games once again got a bit less profitable for the developers. Did I got hit by this? Well, sure, but my games were never that popular and profitable in the first place. Actually – when the sponsorship model went belly up last year – that was a bigger hit, but I survived that as well. You might have noticed that Pastel Games are making less and less games each year. And that my own games no longer have sponsors. Luckily, now you are my sponsors. Each one of you, whether you buy my games or just play them online with ad-block turned off.

I’ll be switching from Mochi to CPM Star, but that will take time. It’s roughly 150 games that need tweaking, and I just don’t have time to do it right away. Maybe one game daily, or something like that… Thanks for testing that CPM in-game ad system for me a few days back. You are the best.

Also, don’t worry about that intellectual property talk, because I’m the creator, and owner of all my IP’s and Mochi going out of business has nothing to do with it.

Since we’re already talking about the grim reality of flash game market, there’s another subject to discuss. It seems like this flash game business is slowly but steadily fading away and one day it’ll be gone. Maybe I’m wrong, but before that happens, creating flash games will become completely not profitable. Remember, that business model that I operate on I created back in 2005. That was, wait for it, centuries ago in internet years. Back then Youtube didn’t exist yet. Can you imagine that? Since then everything changed, and on top of that completely new market emerged – the mobile market, and that completely messed up the dynamic of creating free content for computer devices.

Long story short – I’ll be switching platforms, from flash to (probably, hopefully) Steam. That will take time and effort, but that’s nothing new to me. However, I won’t go on the mobile market. Tried it before, got burned, and now the insanity that is app store and android market is out of the picture for me. I don’t want to create mobile games. I don’t consider swiping a finger proper way of playing my games. Moreover, point and click games are completely incompatible with mobile devices. Lack of cursor defies screen exploration.

The transition from flash to other formats (not necessarily Steam, I can build standalone games and just sell them through my store, as usual) is not something that will happen overnight. I want to at least create Submachine 10 in flash. I just can’t abandon you now, at the end of the series.

To recap – yes, the flash game market is getting worse. that will push me towards creating games on other platforms, which is a good thing.

Is it possible that the term “free games” will no longer apply to my productions? Well, it is.

Everything changes. Again.

I’m still here. Making my own things, as usual.