FAQs on Solitaire Part II

Hello all, I hope you all had a great weekend.

Following in last week’s footsteps, we decided to look at some more comments and thoughts people left for us on our App Store page for Solitaire.

We decided to tackle probably our most interesting complaints and address all the people who claim the game is “too hard” and “nearly impossible” while others claims they’ve won almost every game.


“I loved this game when it first came out.  Cards were dealt at random.  Now that MobilityWare launched the “Win Every Game” version, they made this version virtually impossible to win.  The cards are no longer randomly dealt.  I doubt they are even static once dealt.  Almost every deal hides an ace or a 2 at the bottom of the last rows.  It’s really frustrating knowing that they have modified the program from the original to get you to buy their win all hands app.”

“You will never win playing this version – then the company tries to upsell a version you can win on for $2.99”

“This WAS the best solitaire game.  Then they introduced the “All winners” version.  Now this version is almost impossible to beat and entirely frustrating.  After an update there was a “tired of losing” button that takes you to the new version that you have to pay for.  Cheap shot guys”

“Only one win in maybe 20 games”

“Best solitaire app out there. And for all you little moaners “ohhhhh it’s impossible to beat wahhh” I beat my first two games.”

“So before I bought this app I was nervous because everyone said it was unbeatable but I’ve won almost every game I played”

We decided to respond to all these comments together.  First, we don’t think Tupac is alive, but apparently, there are some conspiracy theorists here too.  No, we did not make Solitaire more difficult to win.  Why would we?  We wouldn’t do that in the first place; that’s not how we do business.  We’re trying to entertain people, not upset them.

First of all, we don’t do business that way.  We here at MobilityWare strive to remain “true” to our games.  Solitaire is Solitaire and Blackjack is Blackjack.  If we had created some new-fangled rules, we would have called it something else.  We can personally assure you there was no adjustment in difficulty done to the game.  Every card is dealt randomly, just as if you were dealing out the cards yourself on your kitchen table.  So yes, there are many deals in which the player cannot win.  Do you ever accuse yourself of tampering?  Surely not, and that is why we do not understand all of the comments that accuse us of adjusting the difficulty.

Second, we admit that we want more customers, not fewer.  We know that people prefer to win rather than lose.  Therefore, making customers unhappy is not a way to get more customers.

Our goal in making applications is to make them fun and amusing so that players are entertained and want to play them again and again.  If we did make an application extremely difficult, we would be shooting ourselves in the foot.  We would be knowingly creating an application that would frustrate the player the first time he/she plays it. That’s not a good way to get a player to download more of your apps.

The “theory” that we made Solitaire more difficult so that players would buy All Winners Solitaire is the one of the most entertaining comments we’ve received – especially in combination with others saying they always win.  Like other “good” conspiracies, it has just enough fact to get people to agree with it.  If one were to think about it more carefully, it simply doesn’t add up.  We would have to believe that we would make more money getting people to buy All Winners Solitaire.  Remember, we’re talking about an app that costs less than your last Starbucks tab!  What was suggested, as in adjusting the diffuclty, could be done but it’s pretty involved and we’re not interested in doing that -- we’d rather build a new app.  That’s much more fun.

If anyone wants to know why we did All Winners Solitaire (or  A.W.S as some people call it), was two-fold.  First, it was kinda fun generating the app (ok, so we’re a bunch of nerds) and second, we wanted to give people the comfort of knowing each hand CAN be won.  Of course, this does NOT mean the user is guaranteed to win, they still have to make all the correct moves to in – and they aren’t all easy – but at least they won’t end up frustrated trying to solve games that have no chance of being won.

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That's all the Solitaire comments for now.  We hope we were able to address most of the common concerns players have towards Solitaire.  It's also very heartwarming to see the overwhelming amount of positive feedback we have received.  You guys are the reason we make our applications.  Thank you so much!


Again, if there is a game where there are comments you would like us to address, please let us know.