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Ridiculous Fishing reels in 300,000 sales at $3, but it was almost F2P

Ridiculous Fishing reels in 300,000 sales at $3, but it was almost F2P

Ridiculous Fishing has sold 300,000 copies on the Apple App Store, Vlambeer founders Jan Willem Nijman and Rami Ismail announced during their GDC Europe presentation. Ismail pointed out that the game sells for $3, so ...

"It's nice," Nijman said.

Ridiculous Fishing made a statement on the App Store by ditching the popular freemium model and simply charging $3 for a full game, rather than nothing (or close to it) for part of a game. When the game turned into a breakout mobile hit, its price point became a talking point and Vlambeer championed the full-game pricing approach.

But Ridiculous Fishing was almost a freemium game.

During brainstorming stages, developers Rami Ismail and Jan Willem Nijman considered offering the game for free and then selling a $1,000 in-game boat. In this version of Ridiculous Fishing, players could see their friends' boats sailing around in the background, and they'd theoretically be tempted to collect all the cool boats they saw, even that $1,000 one. In the end, that didn't work with Vlambeer's development style.

Nijman also wanted to add a feature that had some fish wearing hats, and when players shot those fish they could collect the hats and wear them. While the hat idea stuck, the rest of that pipe dream was flushed. In the end, it was all for the best, it seems.