App Stores No Longer Listing All In-App Purchases
Jim Tanous (via Bryan Chaffin):
A concerning change was quietly pushed to the iOS App Store recently. Users this week noticed that Apple is no longer listing all in-app purchases and their prices for apps and games that offer them.
[…]
The problem with this new policy is that the nature and prices of in-app purchases vary wildly depending on the developer and type of app or game. Users could previously check out the description and prices of the in-app purchases to determine if they were reasonable before downloading or buying an app. Now, it seems, users must download and launch the app to see the same information.
This results in not only an inconvenience for the user, but it also inflates download statistics for app developers and potentially exposes user information as well.
3 Comments RSS · Twitter
This seems especially bad for apps where you have to pay to download even the "base" version without any IAP added. I mean how are you supposed to evaluate an app where it's $1.99 to download, but the IAP to give it the functionality that you want is $19.99 but you can't see the price?
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This does not make sense. IAPs have never been very well displayed and it's always been a problem. Now, it's gotten much worse. It's not good for users, and for many developed, it's also an issue, as it becomes really hard to communicate the way the app is sold to the users, which makes the app and the developer look scammy. Case in point: IAP for trials; freemium model, etc.