Would you rather pay for a game or have it for free but with ads? This question has been on my mind since I released a game a few months ago but didn't earn anything from it (it's 1$). It was my first game so I'm not that surprised, but now that I'm working on another game I'm a little worried about selling a game again. I hate ADS in games but I also hate earning 0$ from something I put so much effort into. 

If you're a gamer you could answer the question at the beginning of this post.

If you're a developer: could you talk a little about your experiences? 

It will be interesting to know more about this. Thank you for your time.

If you're only releasing on itch, then free is the only way you will get any significant traffic in the overwhelming majority of cases. Even so, it will be difficult to rise above the sheer volume of upload traffic, a lot of which is pure nonsense.

There is nothing wrong with ads, but they have been given a bad name by bad actors that have made distracting and obtrusive ads the norm.

My experience and what I've seen.

If you want to sell on Itch, you need to advertise the game outside of Itch.

On PC, it is very, very frowned upon to have ADS and your game will possibly be rated poorly.

On the web it is more common, but if you look, almost no one on Itch uses them, so again, if you add ADS it is possible that your game will be ignored by many players.

On Android it is much more common and people are usually used to that, however, due to permission issues many people will prefer the game to be on the Google Play Store.

The problem is not how much work you have put into the game, the problem is that the world of video games is oversaturated with games and it gets worse every day, if you do not have a solid marketing strategy or if you do not have a community that supports you, it does not matter the price, you will sell nothing.

It depends on the game and the platform.

Know your audience, know your distribution platform. And know your level of professionalism.

You would need an audience to get revenue from ads. And if you had an audience you would either be on a mobile store for ads or you would have pay what you want on Itch or your game would be paid on Steam.

For amateur/hobby level games and most professional "indie" games as well, pay what you want on Itch give best opportunity. But opportunity does not mean success.

Unless you are a professional game developer, you should not expect to make any money at all. Sure, it is nice to get a tip here and there. And most "developers" here are developers in the same sense as writing your own blog makes you a published author.

So, for your game, if the decision is between free, paid and ads, I would probably just play a different game. And one that is playable in the browser at that. But this has also to do with the fact that I do not like platformer games, nor pixel games very much. And I would not have the patience to download 300mb demo of a game that looks like it should be a 30mb browser game.

Seriously, what is up with game sizes these days? It would have been a 5mb flash game some years back.

I agree with redonihunter; it depends solely on the game and platform. In my opinion, even the developer

1. If it’s a small game by a small developer- free with ads would be the most reachable to the general public.

2. If it’s a small game by a more popular developer- paid would be looked down upon. Free with ads would still be the best.

3. If it’s an ambitious game by a small developer- you would have to promote it enough to make people wanna buy it. Once you do then ads would be less profitable.

4. If it’s an ambitious game by a popular developer- do whatever you want lmao. 

The game and platform should tie together. 

Smaller game- put it on platforms that everyone already has. You would groan and roll your eyes if you had to make an entire account for an unknown website just to play flappy bird lol

More ambitious- you’re able to put it pretty much anywhere as long as you advertise well. If you’re a popular developer, you can even strive for console

(this is all my opinion I might be very wrong!)

Why not best of both worlds? Download free with ads and have an option to remove ads with a small fee. I think this is quite standard. Any downsides to this approach?

I am referring to the mobile platform. And as earlier mentioned,  don't put ads in PC games.