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.
I can’t get behind this narrative. Honestly, how else do you market this product? On Twitter? On Facebook? Mastodon maybe?
Look, he’s updating an app that hasn’t been operational in months… nobody who still has that app has any illusions of it coming back. What do they expect when they open that app?
I won’t buy a plushie, since I don’t have a place for it, but I had many fond years using Apollo, and wouldn’t mind buying something like this at all, and I would have never known otherwise (except for people complaining about it online.)
This is where I am. I don’t get the narrative of Darth Christian abusing the populace. He’s an independent gig worker marketing his skills and products.
He’s a millionaire who made those millions from using Reddits free API. Now he’s just grifting.
Source on his net worth?
He has said that he made millions over the years from Apollo. I don’t bookmark every comment he ever makes.
Only time he’s ever said anything close to that was a hypothetical.
https://www.businessinsider.com/reddit-ceo-app-founders-apollo-riff-made-millions-using-api-2023-6
Apollo’s Selig did not immediately respond to Insider’s request for comment regarding the “millions” Huffman claims he has made. But when reached The Verge reached out to him for comment, he did not deny the claim.
Selig has said that Apollo has around 50,000 yearly subscribers that pay around $10 per year.
Those yearly subscribers alone bring in half a mill a year.
When someone asks you to confirm that you’ve made millions of dollars and you don’t deny it, it’s generally because it’s true.
Using your logic, if I sell lemonade at a stand for $1 a glass, and sell 1000 glasses, I’ve made $1000. Regardless of how much it costs to make the lemonade, the cost of the stand, the cost of the property the stand is on.
Are you intentionally ignoring the cost of developing and running the app? Or did you assume things like servers, bandwidth, licenses and more were all free?
The “product” is an attempt to get people who feel sad to give him more money. What other app tries sells plushies of its logo?
Many sell merch. For example, I play an idle game called Melvor Idle that routinely sells plushies of in game pets.
And you’re saying that that’s unethical because…?
I mean think about it. Why does any company sell merch? Is it unethical for them to sell it? Why or why not?
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.
I would also like to add on that this pop up was shown to all sideloaded Apollo users as well.
Ah… so unofficial installations of an old app got a notification that was only intended for people who had a non-functional version of the app, because that’s what the official update was set as? The audacity!
In all seriousness, that’s like saying someone with a pirated copy of a game having a bug and complaining about it to the one who runs the server is justified. Actually, not even a bug, just a regular notification… that only notifies you after you open the app……
You see how thin this argument is, surely?
Spez sucks.
Reddit did him dirty
Did they? He literally made millions of dollars from Reddits product and Reddit didn’t see a cent from him.
Reddit makes millions of dollars from other people’s content without them seeing a cent of it
