You know, it's funny that while the entire run.tv debacle has been going on thanks to what happened with the Its Lives series, I was actually pondering another event that's recently passed by that I'm not too sure most people in the fandom might know about. For those who still play with the original Choices app, about a few days ago, Choices put out a system update that, consequentially, managed to break every single Choices APK mod that was available online.
If you, for whatever reason, don't know what I'm talking about, back in 2016, there was practically no way of acquiring diamonds in the Choices app outside of paying for them. If I remember correctly, the three diamonds a day ad watches weren't part of the original debut, so many fans took it upon themselves to dive into the game's code where they discovered that even though the keys are directly connected to a specific server that made it impossible to edit, the diamonds weren't. So, these tech savvy individuals did what they do best and modded their games to give them infinite amounts of diamonds or just make it so that the diamond counter didn't go down when you chose a premium option. They would then upload these modded apps to pirating sites or other APK sites for other fans to download.
This basically made Choices a real free to play app, unless you lacked the patience to wait four hours a day to play two chapter of a visual novel until the ads for keys basically rendered that wait hollow as well. To the many people who did not have 100 dollars to blow on numerous books, these apps were a godsend. The reason this sparked my interest (aside from my own personal experience) is because I've never seen this happen before.
I've had the Choices app since at least 2017, and I've never seen any update that the people who maintain these mods couldn't crack. More curious is that Pixelberry's official blog just so happened to put out a post talking about how their code was out of date. They, of course, frame it as an issue where the "current architecture significantly limits what's possible" in their goals, and maybe that's true. I just think it's extremely interesting that after ten years, there's a sudden concern for the game's code that coincides with a complete breakdown of these apps that literally removed the primary way in which the Choices makes money.
To tie this into an even longer rant, I genuinely don't believe that Choices' use of generative AI is what most people's problem is. I'm not saying it's not a factor; I just don't think it's the main core. Spellfyre, a game that I've been nursing for about a week and change, outsources it's art to studios that have used generative AI, likely because these companies either don't charge as much or they have only recently introduced generative AI into their process. Yet, the very same people I see getting angry at Choices' use of GenAI in their projects have no problem playing and posting about Spellfyre.
Now, this is not a place of shaming; hypocrisy doesn't necessarily make you wrong. Instead, I think it shows that whatever is going on between the fanbase and Pixelberry Studios is much deeper than the generative AI debates. Frankly, I think the actual issue here is that the Choices app has been growing a lot more hostile to its players, and it's been doing so in a very short amount of time.
When Pixelberry made a post on their blog calling their business model "unsustainable," I think they're being a little gracious with themselves. I would not be surprised if Choices never made a profit ever. I remember the day where Choices decided to change the diamond output for ads from 3 to 100, and I thought to myself "Oh, they're planning on discarding this thing soon." This is why when Choices made the decision to roll back those 100 gems, I wasn't surprised. What I was surprised by was them cutting it down to ten and expecting nobody to say anything.
An average chapter of Choices typically contains a special dress option (25), a special hangout event that's either to give the player an advantage in a later scene or just to pad the time (15-20), and a love interest oriented hangout scene (20). There are exceptions to this rule like a smut-oriented diamond choice costing 30 diamonds (and maybe 20 in books that are more erotica oriented) or the dreaded wedding books that are notoriously expensive. That said, on average, a player can look to spend about 60-80 diamonds a chapter.
Choices did not need to cut the diamonds that low, and it's a really bad look that they did. I truly believe that if they just halved the 100 diamonds a day to about 50, players probably wouldn't have felt so disoriented, even though Choices would still be making a profit. To cut it down to ten was a deliberate choice not just to make diamond farming a little less unfair to the corporation, but to actively frustrate the more stubborn players into just giving up on their hoarding.
The fact that Choices also stopped doing diamond rush events based on playing books or spending on premium choices didn't help either. Neither did getting rid of book passes or the ability to farm diamonds through replaying old books. These were avenues for players to not only regularly engage with the app, but also feel rewarded for doing so. The decision to remove all of these options at once was deeply jarring and cruel. At least those who follow Pixelberry's official accounts got some form of a head-ups about the diamonds; they just removed the other stuff and fucked off.
Prior to that, the shift in book genres had also been creating a lot of tension in the fanbase. Regardless of your opinions on Choices' long standing history of prioritizing romance and then eventually erotica thanks in part to the success of The Nanny Affair (though I would argue that Bloodbound walked so that series could take off sprinting), the reality is that there were a lot of complaints from fans about this that persist to this day, and those complaint largely fell on deaf ears.
The biggest nail in the coffin, to me at least, was the creation of the VIP service. While this was an additional way of making money for the app that went beyond single purchases of keys or diamonds, the decision to include VIP books in the line up for special content increased production pressure on an already swamped work environment as well likely created complaints within fan spaces, which why I think they stopped making VIP exclusive books and shifted to early access books. This has had a tremendous effect on the fandom because now the communal aspect of playing these serialized chapters as they were released have been broken, killing fan discussions due to the fear of spoilers. This whole thing has been amusing to me because the unlimited keys and extra diamond rewards from the package are pretty good on their own; they didn't need to add that extra pressure.
Ever since this acquisition (and honestly even before), Pixelberry has been quietly rolling back a lot of their goodwill gestures to the fandom, likely under the impression that these gestures haven't given enough back for them to continue. The fact that Choices is still, without a doubt, one of the most professional iterations of these types of game has also granted it a monopoly that only Romance Club has seemingly made in a crack in, though we'll see where Spellfyre goes in the future.
What Pixelberry, or rather this new company head, needs to understand is that Choices is a live service game. These types of games are built on a deeply tenuous relationship between fan and developer entirely based on a give and take dynamic. Perhaps Choices felt like the fans were doing much taking, so instead of incentivizing them to do so through small, incremental changes, they just gave up.
When fans feel as if they are simply bags of disposable income in the eyes of the developers, it actually turns them more stubborn and spiteful. I've never bought a pack of diamonds in my life. The two times I did, it was my sister footing a birthday bill. Trying to squeeze money out of those who are determined not to spend any never results in those groups actually forking over cash. They just leave or turn to alternative ways to cheat you. It is what it is. You just have to get over it as a business rather than trying to irritate them into submission and turning away audiences that were actually giving you money.
The whole GenAI thing is just an extension of this need to actually make money on an app that, again, I don't think has ever made money nor really could never make money running the same way that it did in 2016, which was an absurdly different time and economy. And it's also serves as an extension with fan frustration that Choices really just views them as faceless wallets. That fact that there are obvious obfuscation going on here in what is being told to us and what is happening only makes things worse.
If the cost of making books was so high, why are you remaking older books where all you do is slap on a new visual art change that forces you to spend time replacing all of the visual code on a game that nobody was complaining about, unless it was to use these books as testing dummies for a new art style shift?
If the the cost of making these books was so high, why are there just as many if not even more books released in 2025 than there were in 2019? Clearly, they can't cost that much otherwise there would've been some form of a production slowdown, whether that would be putting books on hiatus, making books with a short chapter span like the Haunting of Briar Manor, or simply reducing the amount of projects the studio is taking on at a given time?
If the the cost of making these books was so high, why are you spending extra time and money on side projects in tandem with release books, especially knowing that these shows will never be popular among fans because the entire selling point of your app has always been interactive visual novels?
Again, I believe Choices when they say their former way of life is unsustainable these days. What I don't believe is that they actually care about fixing that; in fact, I believe they're more interested in short-term cheap solutions that basically amount to the "special magic bandage" my Kindergarten teacher gave me when I trip on a sidewalk during recess and left 3/4 of my skin on the hot pavement of a basketball court. How am I supposed to engage with you as a consumer when you have shown an active disdain/or distrust in me and frankly your own business model?
I forgot what the conclusion of this post was supposed to be, so I guess it's just a lengthy prose with an unsatisfying ending that really amounts to nothing. Sort of like a Choices book. The only difference is that I can say I wrote this myself, and people would actually believe me.
