Marques Brownlee admits he “dropped the ball” with Panels app & revamps monetization

Marques Brownlee’s wallpaper app, Panels, has landed him in hot water with fans due to him monetizing many of the features in-app despite it just functioning as something to change the wallpaper on your phone.

As a result, he’s vowed to make it a “dramatically better” free app and charge much less for the same content. He acknowledged that a wallpaper app is already a niche product, especially considering that pretty much any modern phone lets you change your wallpaper.

This was a major point of criticism when the Panels app was initially announced, with many users expressing confusion as to why they’d want to pay for wallpapers.

Marques Brownlee explained that he wanted to create an app that’ll allow people to pay for wallpapers and support the artists who created those backgrounds, but that the free experience on Panels fell far short of what he would have wanted.

“This was a misjudgment on my part; this was terribly communicated. This should be a free app, it should be a great free app experience for the vast majority of the people who use it. I really dropped the ball there,” he explained in his response video.

“The people were right. If I was reviewing this app, I wouldn’t have been very nice.”

MKBHD explained that he’s entirely getting rid of ads in the wallpaper feed, making that feed entirely clean for users. And, if people want a full-resolution wallpaper outside of a collection, you can download it after watching a quick ad. The YouTuber claims that the ad is meant to “offset server charges and pay artists.”

And, while he’s still offering a subscription service, the prices have been substantially reduced. The subscription is now only two dollars a month, bringing the yearly cost down to $24 if you want to not have ads.

Also, there’s another subscription that’s $12 a month that’ll unlock every paid collection for you and give you every future wallpaper collection. There’s also a discounted plan that’ll give you this $12 a month tier, Panels +, for $50 a year.

Fan reception has been almost universal praise for Brownlee tackling the controversy head-on and making changes.

“‘If you’re going to dish it out, you’ve got to be able to take it too’. Bingo, and expected nothing less from Marques and team. Onwards and upwards,” claimed one YouTube user.

“Admitted to the mistake, didn’t make excuses, fixed the problems that people brought up. This is how you respond to controversy,” praised another.

He also claimed he’s got a number of bug fixes and content updates planned for the app, and that he plans to support it for the foreseeable future.