Your app has a button on its front page. No one ever presses that button. With good telemetry, you will know this and remove the button. The only thing you need to know is how many times each user opens the app and how many times they tapped that button. Crash reports can include the causes of errors. Without this data the app might have that unused button there forever and crash everytime anyone taps the donate button and you wouldnt know why you arent getting any dontaions.
Telemetry is usually collected on non metered networks. Usually it is opt-out by default, set by the user in the apps settings. Personally, I’d inform the user of this and let them decice on first startup.
I mean, if studios are doing it more and more and have been doing it across a whole generation, it probably is generational change. Games take 5+ years dev time to make so high budgets are a given. If uch a game fails, it is more likely to tank a studio now. I think hes just making an observation. Nothing too shocking about that.
What Im observing though is more and more indies filling the void with smaller and cheaper games due to easy access to digital distribution. Not exactly a new take as its been hapening for over 15 years now. Interestingly, Epic seems to not take the same stance as Steam does in this space. Where steam gives pretty much any shovelware the same chances, Epic wants to be super picky about these low budget titles. Where is Epic’s Balatro?
If Tim is so focused on publishing/distributing these overblown budgeted games, Epic will miss out on the secondary gaming market where actual fun games truly live. Imo, the generational change is actually indie titles becoming the norm and AAA taking a step back.