I don't mind cocoon's splash screen - they have to eat too. If you look at my game, their splash screen is on for less than 3 seconds. Not saying that that works for everyone but I think it's fair.
If you're using their free service then yes, I'd agree, they do have to eat. A splash screen is more than fair. If this splash screen is still present once you start paying them a monthly fee then no, that's greed. And if they're demanding $500 to remove their ads on top of the monthly fee, that's outrageous.
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Thanks — I'm not looking for a free ride, by any means. I am a published shareware author with another language (Delphi) so the inability to program isn't an issue and I'm a decent hack with PHP/MySQL (I do have one WordPress plugin out and about) and, after beating my head against Unity for another project, I can now write basic stuff in C#.
From what I've experienced, C2 does fit the bill for a RAD (Rapid Application Development) platform and I have no doubt that it's worth the investment... provided the whole act of deployment doesn't bring the process to a screeching halt. And I also am well aware that, when learning a new language, there is a learning curve involved. With C2, that seems to be a rather flat curve for me. For publishing though, it seems pretty steep for most.
While I haven't given up on the hope of purchasing C2, I've put the brakes on. While the free version does give a great opportunity to work with C2, I can also see how it's severely misleading in that you don't get to experience the next step in the process, publishing using someone else's software.
After posting that I did find a thread with a guy claiming to make $150/day from admob. So there are seeming success stories to counterbalance the horror stories. Right now though, I need to know before I invest the money, and more importantly the time, that I'm not going to run headlong into a brick wall trying to figure out how to get published (like the guy in another post who just discovered after a year of creating his game, he's run into a 100mb APK limitation).
But I'll shut up now. I want to hear more of these experiences just like part12.