I found a short article with an additional 10-min video podcast on the recent PB acquisition by Series AI Entertainment. It discusses a little about what led to it and what could be the implications of AI driven content creation. One of the guys in the video is an industry insider who has deeper knowledge about PB.
In the video they also provide some recent revenue and download estimates from Sensor Tower, which is otherwise paid content. One thing that caught my attention was that near the end of 2023 downloads suddenly spiked and then plummeted. If you ask me then it coincides with Blades 2 reaching the end of its weekly releases. It was the book that people had been eagerly waiting for 3 years and also the most successful book of 2023, according to its lead writer. Kinda looks like many people said their final goodbyes to Choices with that book. Many of you did promise to wait for Blades 2 to come out before uninstalling the game due to the declining quality of content in recent times. Overall, if you look at the past 6 months then according to Sensor Tower the revenue has slowly decreased around 30% while downloads have dropped nearly 90%!
The guys in the video told it's mostly the long time players still helping to pay the bills. This is why I find it strange that PB has been trying to attract new players from Chapters with cheap controversial sm*t, instead of focusing on its core player base and what made the game so popular in the first place. It's so easy to lose valuable customers but near impossible to get them back later.
All in all, no matter what we think about the morality of using AI in creative works, the fact is that PB's new sugar daddy is its final straw. If that doesn't work out then it's game over. Only hope is that PB will make Choices available on Steam should the worst case scenario happen.
