Re:"Free-to-play" misleading advertising in Europe
by joesb on Saturday March 01, 2014 @08:31AM
(#7324140)
True price of IAP-enabled app depends on whether consumer use that IAPs. What's a true price of "free" e-bay bidding app? What's true price of "free" Amazon shopping app?
And you don't need to buy IAP to beat most game. This is like saying I can't list my shop as having "free" shipping because people prefer to pay more for overnight delivery.
Re:"Free-to-play" misleading advertising in Europe
by DanBC on Monday March 03, 2014 @04:06AM
(#7332744)
Ebay took measures to prevent people shifting the cost of tems from the item to the post and packing. If the seller pays £1.99 for p&p they can charge £10 and reduce the cost of their item by £8.
Your point about overnight delivery is reasonable. Some games are playable without IAPs. But some games have a degraded experience without IAPs - timers that the player need to wait for is one example - and some games are going to be unfun without IAPs.
Apple has featured a game today that they have listed as free. The largest IAP is $55, but that price is hidden behind extra clicks. This means that when a consumer is comparing two apps they have extra work to do to compare true prices.
This hidden pricing has cause harm.
Developers cannot advertise a game with an honest price. An app sold at £5.99 would struggle in todays app store. So devs have to list games as free but with IAPs.