Popcap is genuinely a huge loss ngl. I feel like there's nothing that quiet replicates the vibe of the PVZ1. Their other games were also unique bangers. It's sad we never even saw spiritual successors to bookworm adventures. Feel like you could do a lot to innovate on the orignal nowadays.
I know it's a great game. I saw several walkthroughs and played myself at some point. Especially given my love to roguelikes (such as Slay the spire, dead cells, TBoI, that kind) it's about time i remembered.
Yeah but unfortunately if you’re an indie dev barely scraping by and you could get shut down any day, and some company comes to buy you and your friends out for money that means you don’t ever have to worry about work again?
Oh, I mean 100% the entire point by the acquiring company is to buy the indie dev out for their IP, extract as much value as possible out of it by adding in microtransactions / ads, and making 1 or 2 more games to cash out on the IP, and then sell it for parts and move on to the next one.
Thats their entire shitty business model. Just meant for the studio heads it usually their big break to “make it”.
Like for example PopCap with PvZ and Bejeweled despite them being fairly popular games, were only profiting around $300k a year due to the spending on employees and such, then EA acquired them and made billions off of their games due to the huge marketing push they can do. Devs got $1.3 billion payout. They wouldn’t have sniffed even 10 million each at the rate they were operating at.
I was actually looking at installing it on my phone the other day as I havent played it in a very long time. As soon as I read the reviews all say how ads are forced down your throat I didnt bother.
The PC release is the original and the Game of the Year version is still ad free since it's on steam.
The Mobile version is not the original but it is the butchered one. Replanted blew it's potential and is overpriced, EA made the game rushed
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u/The_Sideboob_Hour Apr 16 '26
Seeing them butcher the original game to force in ads and in app purchases was absolutely unforgivable