Ridiculous Fishing dev claims "non-evil" freemium is impossible

Ridiculous Fishing developer Vlambeer has suggested that developers need to stop being afraid of charging $3 for mobile games, partly because it's impossible to create a "non-evil" freemium model. They say such 'free' methods simply don't reflect well.

Speaking as part of a Reddit 'Ask Me Anything' thread, Vlambeer developers pitched in to the discussion surrounding the studio's strong success and the state of the micro-payment landscape.

The studio's most recently release, the $3 game Ridiculous Fishing launched to high critical praise, and Vambleer suggest that the game's price-point helped fuel strong sales.

A Vambleer poster said on the matter of pricing, "We do believe that developers shouldn't be scared to charge $3 for a game. The problem is that at $0.99, you'll need to sell endless amounts of copies to be able to survive as an indie developer. Most games don't even get close to that."

On the thorny issue of freemium models, the developer added, "A direct result of the whole race-to-the-bottom in prices is the prevalence of free-to-play on iOS - it seems to be a safer bet. But since its almost impossible to do free-to-play in a non-evil way and without sacrificing the elegance of your game design, we'll prefer to charge $3."

Do you feel that $3 for all of a game's content is reasonable, as opposed to a free game that charges you incrementally for additional content? Let us know what you think below.

Thanks GI.biz.