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Google To Stop Describing Games With In-App Purchases As 'Free'
An anonymous reader writes After a series of investigations, lawsuits, and fines over how in-app purchases are advertised and communicated to users, Google has agreed to stop labeling games that use in-app purchases as "Free." This change is the result of a request by the European Commission to stop misleading customers about the costs involved with using certain apps. "Games should not contain direct exhortation to children to buy items in a game or to persuade an adult to buy items for them; Consumers should be adequately informed about the payment arrangements for purchases and should not be debited through default settings without consumers' explicit consent." The EC notes that Apple has not yet done anything to address these concerns.
Lord almighty we are free at last
Free apps with in-app purchases show that fact right under the 'Buy' button. And a simple setting controls whether in-app purchases are allowed at all, require approval, or can go through automatically (default is require approval). And iOS 8 has the proxy stuff for family accounts (parental approval for everything if you want).
How is this Apple 'doing nothing'?
I print, therefore I am.
I can't stand the whole "pay money to get to the next" level thing, it's like you're not really playing a game anymore. On the other hand I find the game DLC to be strangely inviting.
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We should be able to filter out adware applications too. I don't understand how people tolerate adware and nag screens on their cellphone. I thought the days of the infamous WinZIP "I agree" were over. I certainly wouldn't use a file browser, instant messaging client or or text editor on my PC with ads. I don't see why it would be anymore acceptable on phones.
These "free" games use the same addiction mechanisms, called operant conditioning, as gambling. I am surprised targeting these at minors is even allowed.
What I wish app stores made it easier to do is to distinguish between apps that offer one-time DLC in the form additional content (e.g. more levels, maps, factions, game modes, etc.) vs freemium apps with repeatable purchases for in-game currency and power-ups (which you need to get around the "free" game's increasing difficulty and enforced waits). The former is fine, and a good way to let people try-before-they-buy, but the latter is a toxic plague of money-grubbing crapware. As-is, I have to do things like drill down into the list of top in-app purchases and read the titles to see if consists of things like "level pack" or "10,000 gems". I'd also love it if they showed what percentage of users buy which in-app purchases, or the median amount of money spent per user on in-app purchases.
stuck in my rectum.
Nothing is free. If Google has to explain that to you, you might have a hard time with the rest of your life.
If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
In terms of monentary cost, many useful things are. Free software also used to be less of a crapshoot (is it *really* safe, a virus/trojan, adware, or nagware)?
Apache: Free
OpenOffice/LibreOffice: Free
Java: Free
There were/are also a lot of free utilities that - while not pretty - were basically in the realm of "hey I made this to solve X for myself and thought somebody else might find it useful."
There may be some learning involved to *use* the product, and certainly many FOSS solutions involve community-provided updates, but in terms of personal cost it's free for me.
Worse yet are PAID apps that have in-app purchases. Companies double-dipping piss me off to no end. Either make your app free with in-app purchases, or sell it to me without extra charges later.
Assuming you are the OP of this off-topic post, your counting sucks ass. First it was 250 thousand, now it is 250 million?
As an outsider (haven't used iOS in a few years, and even back then, I rarely used the store thing), all I've got is your description, and it just raises questions:
A "Buy" button for something that is free? I don't understand what people would be buying. Does it really say "buy" or something else ("install" maybe?), whenever price==0?
And for ones where it's free-but-also-not-free, does it come up in searches for free things? If so, then I bet that's EC's objection. If the search has some price field and you enter 0 and that brings up software that has post-install costs, it would make sense that the EC would be calling bullshit, regardless of whatever fine print is shown under the "buy" button.
Are there screen shots of this stuff anywhere? I bet you anything that some of the problems can be figured out just from looking at it.
If you are too stupid to figure out that 'buy' = $ then perhaps you are too stupid to have a digital device in the first place.
What is next, a disclaimer at the car dealer "you have to buy gas and tires.. " so they cant be sued?
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Google play has scads of 'free apps' that are either severely crippled or time limited. Moreover, is it a 'free' app when there's popups telling you to 'remove advertising' eg. buy the "pro" version?
See. what I thought would be a useful stat to show would be "the average amount that those who spend, spend". In other words, if Google showed how much was spent on a given "freemium" app by those who spent >$0. This would give users a meaningful metric with which to decide whether it's worth it to attempt to use the app, because they could, on average, expect to spend that amount. If an app has a spending average of precisely $4.99, and the pro version costs $4.99, then it's fair to assume that users only pay for the 'pro' key within the app, and it won't nickel-and-dime all day. If $25 is the going rate, it's clear that the game is a skinner box and isn't worth it.
Of course, the bleeding obvious issue is that developers wouldn't be too fond of that number getting too high, which people would be less inclined to do once they have the feeling of going 'above average'.
I am a developer and I say why should I not get paid for my work. I do all of my own coding, where my fiance dioes the art. I know that my time will be paid out nicely once I get my app in the store and people download it. I usually put two versions of my app up, a pay version with no ads and a free version with ads. Now if you like the free version fork up the dollar and pay for the no ad app. But if you want to continue using the free version don't comlain when an ad comes up while you are using it. This my way of getting paid a fraction of a fraction of what it cost me to make the application.
It's called rooting and replacing the hosts file with a adblocking hosts file. OMG is android so much nicer after you do that.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Bush is THAT EFFECTIVES!
That's because most games are called "Free to Play" , not "Free" endstop.
The sooner people understand that, the better. The way Apple software is listed ,is that it's "free" to purchase, but everything listed tends to say "in-app purchases" and even lists what those are.
Android, tends to be full of malware, and even then, crappier games that don't label things, and then make things stupidly easy to accidentally buy things.
What should happen, is that "free-to-play" games should literately be illegal to be labeled as "free"
n/t
Bush was a failure! He only killed 250,000 Iraqis! Hussein at least managed 6 million of his own people. Bush wishes he could get those numbers!
Maybe they should print the average or median price for the app, including the in-app purchases. That would be more fair. "People using this app have made 3.55$ in app purchases, in average"
That extends well to tools used by businesses to do business. It doesn't extend so well to things like games.
Probably this Slashdot story: Study: Half of In-App Purchases Come From Only 0.15% of Players
So what do you call a game you can play without spending money? Since you can't use free.....mmmm..... "Buy this game for 0.00!". Got to love lawsuits based on the customer being stupid.
We make 100% free games, apps and music. Why? Because making money off of them is more trouble than it's worth, and we already have a chicken in our pot.
Sorry AC, but your opinion is worthless because you don't know how this business model works. If you don't want to release your content for free then don't, but don't harp about how others do it.
Free to play, or freemium, games have three major business models. I'm not a fan of freemium as even fair models are still laden with DRM but some are much worse than others.
1. Pay real money for in game consumables. - This is basically trying to bring the idea of an arcade where you continuously have to drop quarters to play. In a few instances, this is fine because the consumables aren't required to advance in game but are optionally available to make it easier. Most of the time though, this is pure money grab as the game is tuned to require purchases to advance. Do not support this. In the case of multiplayer games, this becomes "pay to win" in which case they can go fuck off.
2. Allow access to part of the game and allow purchasing of more with real money. - This is an advanced form of shareware which is borderline acceptable as long as prices are nominal, up-front, and the buyer is able to re-download content at any time. Sometimes this is as simple as the "free" part being a demo and there being a one time purchase to open the rest of the game. Most of the time, however, this is just an excuse to sell every single thing piecemeal. The idea being that they will try to get considerable more money from an invested player than they would if they just sold the game for an up-front price.
3. Allow all players access to the entire game but force non paying players to either wait or earn it. - Like the others this ranges from tolerable to insipid. I'm more of a fan of having the player earn their access as I believe that wasting a player's time watching a countdown timer is one of the worst gaming sins. World of Tanks falls squarely into the "earning access" part of this group. The entire game can be accessed without spending money but you have to work for what other players can get simply by paying.
How does this work then? Well, it's not exactly free. When you play, even without paying, you are providing a service to the game owners by being an opponent to potential paying customers. Most MOBA (or DotA style games) fall into this group. TapeCutter spent an entire year playing without paying but was still indirectly supporting Wargaming.net by being a (potentially undergeared) target for paying customers to attack. The fact that he then spent money on the game down the road is just gravy as he had already contributed. And yes, this is probably where "free to play" shines the brightest.
you people really do know how to cry your way into getting your way, huh?
I like this idea as some apps are deceptive in that they appear free but are really not due to micro transactions. Others are also labelled as "free" when they are really just shareware that requires a purchase to unlock all the functions. Apple should really follow suit as the same problem exists in that app store too.
I always liked the notion of having a feature complete free version that is Ad supported only and then a paid one that is ad free rather than micro-transactions but that's just me.