I thought this was interesting to think about as there is this game I have been playing for fun called Pikmin Bloom where for the most part it’s kind of like a glorified pedometer as you can collect digital items as you go about with your day. Recently they made some huge changes such as increasing the difficulty of various tasks to the point where a lot of people threatened to not buy anymore products from the company while potentially stopping to play the game.
Now there were people in the opposite end of the spectrum who felt that the changes were great and that people need to try it for a few days before making any conclusions. But regardless, many wanted the changes reverted immediately.
So it did make me wonder how would you respond as the company when you see this amount of backlash for your business decision? Do you immediately revert back to the way it was or just accept that you need to lose people from your existing base in order to do what you think is best in the long-term?
Other examples of changes are say cellphone makers that decide they need to axe certain features to make room for the tech that they feel is the future such as specific USB port types. Or more controversial scenarios would be getting rid of the headphone jacks which a lot of people still want. Like there, do you just accept the backlash because you believe the new direction you are taking is best? One factor here which may have helped was a little warning or notice ahead of time as the company could have probably gotten useful insights ahead of time before making a decision.