Christian has decided to squeeze Apollo again for more money, besides the wallpapers and asking people to decline their prorated refund. Christian additionally forced a pop up ad advertising this plushie.
This is just exposing to more people the greediness that Christian has tapped into recently. Recall that previously, Christian forced daily pop up ads to paid pro users to get them to subscribe to ultra, which was originally stated to only be for notifications since it required a server, but now had all new features attached to it, even very simple local features. Reddit did him dirty, but to be honest, he may have had it coming. He previously disabled ultra access to Jailbroken devices as well, even if they were valid paid users. Christian also didn’t provide refunds to lifetime users who bought it before all the API stuff. Speaking of that, does anyone remember how instead of stating the price was increasing (which happened all the time) he instead said it was “going on sale at the old price”? Kinda misleading.
It’s not inherently unethical to sell merch. It’s however apparent to me that this seems to be a cash grab. The app died months ago. This is further apparent to me when acknowledging the greediness Christian has shown before. It is unethical to try and use your already dead app to try and gain even more money by selling a low-effort plushie.
Again I ask… what makes this a “cash grab” and other merch not? Is it because this service is no longer active? What if there was a new plush released for Phantasy Star Online, a now defunct but beloved game?
I’m not sure what Phantasy Star Online is, but yes it is because he is releasing merch for his defunct app months after the fact while also being radio silence towards the Apollo community. Christian says he wants to move on, but I guess that doesn’t apply to money making ventures.
I’m also more critical on this because of his previous more greedy behavior, which I outlined in my main post as well.
What is the statute of limitations you are arbitrarily lining up for when it’s okay to sell merch, then? As soon as a product with a live service is no longer functioning?
As far as “move on” and “money making” goes… I just don’t see the big deal. He doesn’t want to keep developing Apollo, and wants a new project, hence moving on. But as far as reminiscing on good times, is that now not allowed?
And as far as the refunds for lifetime users goes, what would be an acceptable refund? For every person who bought the lifetime to get a refund? Everyone who bought it a year back? Six months? Three months? You buy it for the lifetime of the product, and it was lifetimed. Perhaps he didn’t have a good way of sorting data for users and when they purchased the memberships, making this a moot point. Perhaps he didn’t have the money to refund it after refunding everyone else. Or perhaps a million other possibilities. Regardless, I don’t see this as unethical, just unfortunate.
I covered much more than just the lifetime refunds, but do you really believe that there was no way for Christian to refund people who bought lifetime before all the API stuff? Someone could’ve seen Christian reassuring that API is not an issue, buy lifetime, and basically get screwed over. The plushie is a last straw sort of deal. He wants to completely move on from Apollo, unless there’s a chance he can make some more money from it. Not sure how you call selling a plushie of your logo posthumously “reminiscing on good times” while already selling them on wallpapers and convincing them to decline their prorated refunds.
Considering the time that post came out, the situation was developing rapidly. I won’t fault someone for not seeing the future, especially since his updates were very detailed and took a sharp turn very quickly in their tone. I don’t have omniscience and won’t judge without evidence.
Also, I don’t think asking users if they’re okay with not refunding is unethical. They could still be refunded if they wanted to… it’s just asking for the equivalent of a donation at that point (aside from lifetime, not discussing that.) Moreover, again, I don’t think it’s unethical to advertise and sell products, especially since it’s not misleading. It’s showing you exactly what you’re getting, a wallpaper or a plushie. Unless he decides to take money and not deliver on a product he advertised, I still don’t see what the problem is.
Essentially your argument (to me) is this:
Christian is accused of not refunding lifetime users, asking users who’ve paid if they are okay with not getting an offered refund, making public optimistic comments that aged like milk, and advertising and selling products in a defunct app that has not worked for anything else in several months (nor does it claim to on the App Store.)
tbh, the original OP has accusations, without any proof. That shit got tiring on Reddit. Until then, it just seems like to me the guy is mad Christian wants to market Apollo’s mascot a bit more and is trying to paint him as evil.
(FWIW, Apollo users were able to get Apollo as a Pixel Pal, so it wasn’t like this came out of thin air)
EDIT: Seems like OP is also trying to rile up the Voyager community by showing a comment from Christian about how he’s “contributed enough” to Voyager (with it being an Apollo clone).
Pop ups to paid users: https://old.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/z83qh4/im_an_early_supporter_and_paid_for_pro_ive_had https://old.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/12hcrdw/ultra_spamming etc
Disabling paid access to Jailbreak users: https://old.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/hpyybw/any_way_to_know_what_tweak_is_causing_this_i (it was originally meant to stop pirates but the tweak list included more than just piracy tweaks)
https://old.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/z75s9r/last_chance_for_black_fridaycyber_monday_sale_on Black Friday pop ups as well as locking new features to Ultra subscription (originally meant for things that require a server only)
https://old.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/z4l0v5/apollo_for_reddit_and_pixel_pals_black_friday increasing prices disguised as a sale
Checking r/ApolloApp can find many more examples of everything I have talked about.
I’m a long time Apollo users, so I took for granted that not everyone is aware or remembers these events
Christian’s apologised for the popups on the top one:
You also seem to be presenting the increased prices as him doing it before when I’m seeing it was clearly done after.
For jailbreaking, well, if you have tweaks that allow pirating of in-app purchases, you’re gonna have to deal with that tbh. He wasn’t targeting jailbroken users per se, he was targeting people who are using the free IAP tweaks there. Even if the user didn’t intend to use it on Apollo, those tweaks aren’t discriminate in how they work (having run that tweak before when I used an iPhone). You’ll have to just disable it on apps that detect it.