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Christian Selig may not be working on Apollo for Reddit anymore, but it seems he\u2019s doing just fine. Since shutting down Apollo because of the potential costs of Reddit\u2019s usage-based API pricing, Selig has poured his energy into Pixel Pals, a widget-focused app that takes advantage of many iOS features in some surprising and delightful ways. According to Selig, the app is proving to be lucrative, too.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
As an example of what Pixel Pals is now capable of, look no further than Language Pal, a language-learning widget that just launched for free<\/a>. With Language Pal, you can practice vocabulary across 10 different languages (including, hilariously, \u201cCanadian\u201d) through a guessing game widget right on your homescreen.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Language Pal is just one of many widgets you can pick from. There are more traditional widgets like calendars, clocks, and battery percentages. You can care for the cute pixel animals as part of a Tamagotchi-like virtual pet game. I\u2019ve been impressed by the other games \u2014 you can play a full version of 2048<\/em> as a widget<\/em>, though it is a little finicky. And there are more widgets in the works, too; Selig tells The Verge <\/em>he hopes to release a trivia widget (\u201cTrivia Pal\u201d) by October 27th.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Pixel Pals is free, and you don\u2019t have to pay a dime to be able to use the vast majority of what the app offers. However, there are a few ways Selig makes money from it, including an an option to pay real money for virtual food for your pixel friends and a premium subscription ($1.99 per month or $14.99 per year) that gives you access to things like more pixel animals.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Pixel Pals has been a big success for Selig, and he says it was even before Apollo shut down<\/a>. \u201cPixel Pals does weirdly well,\u201d Selig tells The Verge<\/em>. \u201cEven when Apollo was in its heyday, Pixel Pals was about 40 percent of my overall revenue, and it\u2019s only gone up from there now that I\u2019ve had more time to focus on it.\u201d He says he could see Pixel Pals approaching $1 million in annual recurring revenue by the end of the year, \u201cwhich would definitely exceed Apollo.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n