Except Apple did it because they were forced to by a class-action lawsuit. I think that's a pretty good example of "regulation".

Except there are confusion when Apple markets it as the "Free Game of the Week". Many people thought this meant IAP was free as well.

Say "Free game of the week with paid IAP still included", I don't have a problem with this.

Sorry, but it tells you the cost, right on the damn screen. It's not hidden. It literally tells you the price. This is well after you've already downloaded the free app. So you have the game. You are inside, and their are prices next to it.

I mean, damn. Do these same people go to a club, get in for free, and then wonder why they still have to pay for drinks?

> Say "Free game of the week with paid IAP still included", I don't have a problem with this.

I guarantee that using that wording, people would think that the paid IAP was included with the "Free game of the week." I mean, they are already dumb enough to see a price and ignore it.

If it's "unlock extra maps for $5" I think that's fair.

If it's "125 tokens for $10", that's not really telling you the price. Video arcades used this abstraction tactic successfully. Make people convert money upfront, make the exchange rate difficult to calculate mentally, ensure that the user is left with worthless "change" so they top up again, to avoid being left with sunk costs.

If every time an IAP is offered it showed prices in real $/€, people would think twice.

I've never read so many comments from so many people wanting to give money to products they hate to support companies that use tactics you deplore.

I know Apple does that, the Play store also indicates that an app has in-app purchases. But why not say it clearly in the 'purchasing button'?

Notably, for the Play store, it says "FREE" in green letters on grey in the search results, and then you need to click through to see "offers in-app purchases" in dark grey on light grey set well apart from the big, green "Install" button on the details screen, with no information about the in-app purchases.

For my part, I've stopped installing stuff that "offers" this because of the lack of details, but it's extremely annoying to end up clicking through dozens of games to find ones without in-app purchasing because it's not called out in the search results... They've clearly done the bare minimum, in order to avoid losing installs over it. If they cared about their users, they'd have made it far more obvious.