Last week I sent out 10,000 emails informing customers that an update was available for Airport Madness 3D.  I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised when I received over 1000 responses asking, “How do I download the update?”.  Game updates have always been a great struggle for me.  Back in 2010 when Flash was still considered cool and cutting-edge, I invented an in-game update system that actually downloaded and installed updates for you.  All by itself.  It was one of the coolest things I ever coded.  Too bad the system failed for so many users.

I switched to email notification.  Everybody would get an email, letting them know that an update was available.  And in theory, everybody would have still had the original download link that they purchased, and could easily download updates from it.  However, that is not the way the world works.  People lose emails, and sometimes delete them.  I’ve had a great number of people tell me that their link no longer works (something I’m investigating with our commerce provider, FastSpring).

What I intend to do next is add an in-game notification system that lets users know when an update is available, and gives them a button that links them to the download file.  I think this system will work quite well, and it will be added to the next update, version 1.11. I will however, need to send out one last email notification, letting users know when update 1.11 is available.

I sincerely appreciate the patience of all my customers with these updates.  Hey, at least they are free!