'Cos I used to love mobile gaming, not even that long ago I genuinely thought it was the future. You think the indie game deluge on Steam is bad? Mobile is currently demonstrating what might become of Steam if it lost what little quality control it still has. Firstly, as the Unpacking devs themselves said on Twitter, it's very demoralizing to see something truly creative and lovingly-made so soullessly and opportunistically shaken down by money robots with no vision beyond the next quick buck, and secondly, it threw once again into sharp relief what an absolute hellhole mobile gaming has become. The whole situation makes me depressed for several reasons. But what's really soured the pleasant air surrounding the game is that some git hashed out an obvious clone of it called ' Unpacking Master' and released it for mobiles, free-to-play and more wallpapered with ads than the average rally driver it was brazen enough to rip off some of the room layouts, to say nothing of the title, and before complaints caused it to be pulled from stores, it was sitting right at the top of Apple's free-to-play chart. It's a wonderful example of a game that focuses squarely on one interesting mechanic - in this case, the act of unpacking all your stuff after moving into a new home - and uses it to covertly build a rich setting and story under the surface the sort of thing Lucas Pope does very well. Recently on my streams and videos, I've been talking up Unpacking a lot. There, that's the requisite capitalism-bashing out of the way let's talk about the rest of it. Shitheads flooding the digital stores with cheap knockoffs in the hope of making a quick return exactly the same thing that caused the 80s video game crash. What the hell happened to mobile gaming? Well, money is what happened.

This week on Extra Punctuation, Yahtzee discusses how indie hit Unpacking was mercilessly ripped off and cloned and how it is reflective of larger, horrendous trends in the mobile gaming sphere.

Hell is Others instal the new for apple