Windup Minds ruled out mobile because of user-acquisition costs

Co-founder Bernie Yee says Plants vs. Zombies 2 could be restrained because the franchise already had a large audience. His new studio instead launched its virtual-pet games on Steam and desktop in July.

Yee argues that developers often copy the visible monetization outcome of successful free-to-play games without reproducing the distribution conditions that made it viable. A light-touch economy still has to generate enough value across a sufficiently large install base to fund continued development and acquisition.

Windup Minds evaluated mobile for Stay: Your Forever Pet and its desktop companion, but concluded that paid acquisition costs made the model unattractive for a small studio. The practical lesson is to choose platform and business model together: audience access, price, retention and monetization cannot be planned as independent decisions.