I paid for this game in 2021 because I wanted to play Fruit Ninja now and then and I didn’t want to deal with ads or all the weird stuff in the newer version. It is now unplayable without paying for the stupid new subscription service. They’ve basically just stolen the money I paid them now.
Subscription service for an old single player game is bullshit. This is my current beef with nintendo, aside from trying to kill the emulation community. I just got a switch light. I found they even offer old NES games for free in a bundle. Oh but you have to sign up for their subscription service, two weeks free! I gotta pay six bucks a month and always be online to play ancient once practically abandonware single payer games from before the internet was even a thing.
Remember, you don't own shit unless you have it in physical media.
It blew me away that the game could be played on a calculator. It wasn't exactly inconspicuous to play in class though. The sound of the keys clacking as you dragged your finger across them couldn't possibly be mistaken for actual math work and made subtlety impossible.
The calculator can handle it because there is no 3D, the fruits are animated 1-bit bitmaps of around 24×16 resolution. (Unlike in the Mario game, sprites don't even have transparency, they just draw on top of each other.) Fruits can be sliced through in any of the 8 directions but the graphics always just stop animating and split horizontally in half. I'm not complaining, it's a genius demake. The concept, gameplay, fonts, contrast fadeout with the bomb... all perfect. The watermelon in the menu is a little tutorial, and they even spare a few bytes for "⠟⠇⠯⠇⠯⠂⠿⠅ ⠀ ⠹⠁⠯⠇ ⠀ ⠛⠇⠧⠇⠽⠅⠹⠁ ⠀ ⠻⠇⠞⠆⠟⠇⠿⠅", a friendly message because CPU-native TI-83/84 Plus games don't have a standard for that (I've seen them use MODE, ALPHA, CLEAR, 2nd+MODE (QUIT), F6, a menu item, or ones that only get exited automatically on game over!)
With some practice, you can get over 95% of fruits while playing stealthily (pressing 1 key at a time with a finger on each of the 3 center columns such as SIN-COS-TAN).
AccuWeather did the same thing. I got their adless app forever. But they stopped supporting it and forced to update to the new app full of ads and subscription required. Total BS
Okay I agree that subscriptions are dumb, especially when you already own something. And I know capitalism is a fucking hellhole.
However, they did not steal the money you paid them. It has been 1,279 days since April 11th 2021. You paid $2.15 total for the app, per your screenshot. Assuming you used the game every day, let's break down that cost to cents per day. It works out to 0.168ths of a cent per day for ownership during this time. For a game you clearly enjoyed playing, you paid about a cent per week, which was used to pay the employees who were supporting the maintenance and possibly further development of the app. that money wasn't stolen, it was used to support the thing that you enjoyed.
Does it suck that you can't use it anymore? Absolutely!
Should you be able to own your purchases forever? Yes!
If you went to a store, purchased a board game, took it home and played it for a couple years, and then suddenly someone from that store came to your house, took the game from you and prevented you from playing it further, would that not be them stealing your money? Not really sure how this is different.