A well-received Chinese mystery game on Steam got a mobile port, and its iOS rating absolutely cratered — not because the game is bad, but because it dares to charge ¥28 (~$4). Yes, twenty-eight yuan. That's the price of a milk tea.
Mountain Trip (山河旅探) is a premium Chinese deduction game originally released on Steam. It recently launched on mobile with content identical to the PC version. The game is controversial among mystery game veterans: its core gameplay and crime methods are widely accused of being 'completely copied' from other mystery titles. However, since the source material is high-quality, casual players who haven't played the originals find it impressive — while genre veterans call it derivative. Classic polarized reception.
When the mobile port went live, the original poster decided to check the iOS ratings for some popcorn-worthy entertainment. The result was worse than expected.
The iOS review section was a warzone. The game uses a model where the first chapter is free and subsequent chapters are behind a paywall, with a full unlock option at ¥28. For mobile gamers conditioned by the free-to-play gacha ecosystem, this pricing was apparently an unforgivable sin.
The comment section erupted with debate. One user argued: 'If you're gonna do buyout pricing, just charge ¥45 upfront and be done with it. Luring people in with a free first chapter and then charging per chapter is just a terrible consumer experience.' Another pushed back: 'The first chapter is basically a demo, and you CAN buy everything at once. If you insist on buying chapter by chapter, that's on you.'
But the real tea came from deeper analysis. One commenter cut to the core: 'Mobile gamers are overwhelmingly freeloaders — gacha games have a paying rate of roughly 5%.' Another was even more blunt: 'This is exactly why nobody makes premium single-player games anymore. A reskinned gacha game raking in ¥648 per pull is just too profitable.'
Interestingly, the game scored a massive 9.6/10 on TapTap, the Chinese indie-leaning game platform. But skeptics in the comments quickly shot this down, with one noting: 'I've seen TapTap lock ratings before — when 铃兰之剑 (Lancaster) launched with drama, it was sitting at a 6 but got artificially locked at an 8.' Another added: 'TapTap is literally owned by XD Inc., of course they'd protect their own games.'
The most legendary comment came from one user who nailed the cultural divide: 'It's definitely not as good as Ace Attorney 1-3, more like a gap between AA1-3 and AA4-6, but it's nowhere near this bad. This is purely a pricing culture shock. Some people agonize over skipping meals to afford a ¥50 indie game, while others think ¥648 per gacha multi-pull is too cheap — can they please make it ¥64,888 instead?'
The OP ended with the most savage observation of all: 'Don't blame mobile game devs for being predatory. Turns out it's a mutual dance — the players and the industry deserve each other.' In other words: the gacha-ification of mobile gaming isn't just corporate greed; it's what the audience has been trained to want. The top reply doubled down: 'Abathur: Evolution complete!' — a StarCraft meme implying mobile gamers have been fully domesticated by the F2P model.
At the end of the day, Mountain Trip's mobile rating crash isn't really about game quality. It's yet another case of premium pricing being absolutely toxic in the Chinese mobile market. ¥28 is pocket change in the indie community, but in a mobile ecosystem where 'free download + ¥648 gacha pulls' is the norm, it might as well be a wall between two completely different worlds.
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