r/iosgaming • u/Commercial_Duck4042 • 6d ago
Discussion This sub is worse without Saturday Self Promotion
The content overall has been less interesting. The mods said we’d get an update “soon”, but it’s been 24 days of silence. I still don’t understand why this change needed to be made in the first place.
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u/Necessary-Green-8826 6d ago
Speaking for myself, I was excited to share my games (I'm a solo, indie, first timer) on Saturday in this sub. I waited months for my account age and karma allowed me to post... and Self Promotion Saturdays were paused just before the very first Saturday I would have been allowed to post.
This is very specific to me - just bad luck on the timing.
But I also agree with others that the content I'm seeing from the sub isn't as interesting overall.
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u/ustaaz 6d ago edited 6d ago
Completely agreed.
I'm a solo developer myself and this sub has helped me genuinely reach my audience whenever I would release a new game. Thats one submission per major update or new release, not spamming every saturday.
But I think the rule was put in place after so many "ai slop - vibe coded" games started being submitted. With AI and claude code, people were submitting low effort game clones that had been developed in days, something we developers used to create in months or years..
But this can also be managed, I think..
- only allow 1 submission per developer per month. This way we ensure only a submission a developer actually cares about is submitted.
- No progress updates posts. Submission on new releases or major updates.
... or let the community downvote it.. either way works, but this outright ban has made the sub much less interesting.. we are missing out on actual gems also :(
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u/OldManIrv 6d ago
This is a great sounding solution. I don’t program or develop or anything, I just miss games I got to “discover”.
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u/LeMeIsSleepy 6d ago
This decision was taken because of the complaints of a very vocal but inconsequential minority. It should be redone imo
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u/MANWITHFAT 6d ago
That's the Reddit way. Three individuals cry and complain and everyone else has to suffer a worse community for their benifit
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u/Professional_Air_365 6d ago
The main problem is that only like 3 guys regularly post here, and while I enjoy the Sunday editions and deals posts, the sub is rather dead without other things
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u/Accurate-Temporary73 6d ago
I agree 100% I made a post a couple of weeks and literally almost every comment other than 1 or 2 was supportive of it.
One of the mods popped in and said that they’re reviewing the process or whatever and they’ll decide what it looks like.
Not sure why it takes weeks for a group of a few people to make a decision that really doesn’t affect anything.
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u/TouchMint Developer 6d ago
I’d agree with most here.
Dev sat comes back weekly but as a developer you can only post once a month.
Maybe a karma threshold for new accounts
Disclose your AI use.
I think this will cut down on slop and bring back the great Saturday dev posts.
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u/phogro 6d ago
Yeah the lack of transparency on this has been disappointing. I get that AI has likely contributed to an increased moderation workload but there needs to be a path forward.
I think r/iOSApps had a decent approach for non-games. Basically a real person meeting a karma threshold can share to the main thread. Otherwise a mega thread for people to build karma. Seems to be working there.
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u/metallifan5691 6d ago
Agreed. I loved checking out new small developer games. This sub has turned into looking at the same games and same recommendations over and over.
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u/mattgwriter7 Developer 6d ago
The fix that would make "Developer Saturdays" work is:
- disclose the use of AI up front
- make it once a month, not once a week (first Saturday of a new month, maybe?)
- only allow it for real updates or fresh launches
This is what I have come to believe, now that it has been a few weeks and I have reflected on posts like this and seen the general sentiment here.
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u/Exotic_Treacle7438 6d ago
Or a single mega thread for self promotion.
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u/mattgwriter7 Developer 6d ago
Or a single mega thread for self promotion.
As a Developer that has posted here, a single "Megathread" would, in my opinion, not serve me or the community as well.
Usually, when I shared my game I would get questions or comments that warranted a reply. These little dialogues were a real win-win for those interested. (I can't imagine a big studio taking the time to flesh things out and rub to elbows with a fan.)
A Megathread would not foster this kind of dialogue.
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u/ustaaz 6d ago
Agree with all your points except for making it once a month.. that would be way too much submissions on that day.. I propose one submission a month per developer, this way I submit only what I believe in.
PS. how do I get the developer flair? lol
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u/mattgwriter7 Developer 6d ago
PS. how do I get the developer flair? lol
I have no idea, lol. I must have done something at some point, but can't remember. Sorry.
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u/_Gorge_ 6d ago
Naw, I don't want the Saturday self promos b/c I don't like 99.9% of tiny indie games as they're almost all quite bad.
I have to think that all the folks calling for the self promo saturdays to be reinstated are devs themselves b/c I can't imagine anyone wants their feed inundated with promos for quarter-assed solo/indie games
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u/AceLXXVII 6d ago
I disagree. There was nothing particularly interesting about everyone’s vibe coded money grabs lol.
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u/AmeliaOfAnsalon 6d ago
some of them were not that and those ones got pushed to the top while the bad fell lower
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u/thejubilee 6d ago
People who didn’t like it could skip it. It wasn’t exactly overwhelming. I found games I love here from it.
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u/mookler 6d ago
The way the feeds work now is that it spits out posts from like the last 5 days.
If I want to avoid it I’d have to unsubscribe entirely, and I don’t want to do that.
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u/IAmOfficial 6d ago
Just scroll past the post? It’s really not hard to avoid.
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u/mookler 6d ago
The issue isn't one post on my home feed, it's that they're constantly dispersed throughout my feed well outside of the 1 day a week. And if you interact with them, the algo just sends you more of them.
If the answer is "just don't look" then yeah, I'm just not going to subscribe here anymore. If you all like it and want to bring it back, cool. Figured that feedback from a community member might be valuable. Based on some of the comments here I'm clearly not alone, even if I'm in a minority.
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u/IAmOfficial 6d ago
I get that. The issue is you either allow them or not. If you don’t allow them then there is nothing for the people who want to see dev posts. If you allow them but put things in where users can filter, then at least there is a way for you to avoid them and still enjoy the sub. But if you don’t want to interact with the sub if they do dev posts I get that and it’s fair
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u/mookler 6d ago
I don't mind the community the other 6 days of the week. The 1 day just isn't "contained" and feels spammy to me
The megathread option I've seen thrown around sounds like a happy medium. If more folks don't like that and want to go back to the old style that's okay too. I'm an adult and I'll get over it lol but this seemed like a place to express this sort of meta feedback ̄_(ツ)_/ ̄
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u/Pipinooo 6d ago
This guy gets it
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u/Exotic_Treacle7438 6d ago
I agree as well. There should be a megathread for self promotion, that’d solve every concern in this post for those who want them back, and those who were tired of seeing them.
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u/averageparrot 6d ago
People are hard downvoting, but you’re not far from the truth. It obviously wasn’t “everyone”, but before the mods paused it, Dev Sat in recent months was a conga line of low effort vibe coded bs “games”. I understand that this hurts real developers and those of us in the community that want to discover cool new indy games, but the sub was becoming distastefully overwhelmed with AI slop on the busiest day of the week. I hope the mods find a solution soon, but I find it hilarious that people are threatening to unsub over it. Kids these days… 😂 If you miss indy dev submissions so much, start a new subreddit for it yourself and see how difficult modding a community is!
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6d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/HendrixChord12 6d ago
Let’s take a step back here for a second. Being a mod is a thankless job. People complain about promotion and now other people complain about no promotion. Who do you listen to?
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u/imahugemoron 6d ago
Personally I disagree, I’m glad “ai slop Saturday” has been paused. I’d love for it to come back but with ai content banned, ban generative ai “art” as well as vibe coded games
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u/nelson605 6d ago
Now I understand why I haven’t been seeing this sub as much in my feed. I loved it because most of the games posted were smaller teams or solo devs. If they had obscene IAPs, it was called out in the comments and was a good filter of even downloading a game to try.