How to Lose a Loyal Customer

So I don't talk much about other people's applications; I think, given my position, it's rude. I'm going to break that for a reason.

A bunch of my coworkers were Angry Birds fans, then I became one. I bought the iPhone games and the iPad games and even the desktop game.

The iPhone/iPad culture is pretty straightforward: free = one expects it to be ad supported; paid = one expects it to be ad free. I don't like being the product, so I'll pay for what I use (unless I'm using a free version to see what the thing is like).

Then an update came out -- if you failed on a level more than once in a row (as people will tend to do when trying to increase a level's score), a Bing ad popped up.

A whole bunch of us complained. A bunch of people down-rated the game for that (I didn't; I rarely rate apps).

The next update was worse: bailing on a level brought up a whole bunch of Rovio's own ads. Spare me.

In less than an hour, something that had been a cool source of enjoyment became so annoying that I not only wrote more than one angry missive (Rovio replied), but I uninstalled all their applications.

Despite that, I still felt compelled to delete all five copies of their games from my computer. They listened about one of my two complaints, but without both addressed, I wasn't going to play any more. Angry Birds had stopped being cool for me. The promised update hasn't appeared yet, but given the app store queue, that may not be their fault. When it does, I'll see if both issues are addressed and how I feel about it at that time. I'd have to start over at the beginning; I've jetted all my Game Center history.

You know what's cool? Robot Wants Kitty.