Let's go even further and have them ban consumable IAPs. There's almost no legitimate use case for them other than creating pretend currencies that make people hit the skinner box lever harder and spend more money.
"Indeed, a major source of objection to a free economy is precisely that it ... gives people what they want instead of what a particular group thinks they ought to want. Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself."
Sure, Apple can do with its platform what it wishes, but the arguments I see being put forth here are troubling. "The ignorant masses are making the 'wrong' choices for themselves, and we in our benevolent wisdom should substitute our preferences for theirs." Where does that sort of thinking end?
I think if you ask most people battling health issues or have eating problems whether they could force their future selves for the next month to be not allowed to order dessert, they would choose to. They wouldn't trust themselves in the heat of the moment.
There's a fundamental disconnect we have between our short term and long term interests, and it manifests in all kinds of problems people end up with, including their health, finances, and relationships. There's an overwhelming body of psychological evidence that suggests that these issues are real, prevalent, exploitable and exploited.
To give an example, there's evidence that shows that we're more likely to succumb to temptation when we're mentally exhausted. If that's not bad enough, actively resisting temptation is exhausting! [1] That's why putting a snack bar full of M&Ms, Snickers, and apples near a bunch of stressed out engineers leads to a more unhealthy workplace (guess which snack is always left over). You can say that the engineers are free to not partake, and I say there's more freedom to focus on other things in their absence.
To bring it back to this topic, I think computers need mechanisms to help people with self-control, and a great first step is to curtail software that exists to exploit people with poor impulse control.
There's a saying that I am reminded of:
"The mind is a wonderful servant but a terrible master."
> I think if you ask most people battling health issues or have eating problems whether they could force their future selves for the next month to be not allowed to order dessert, they would choose to.
This is the argument against the legalization of hard drugs. You hear it most often from ex-addicts "we can't legalize meth, I was tweaking out so hard I'm surprised I turned my life around and I'm not dead!".
As emotionally appealing as they are, their arguments are false. First, criminalization didn't actually prevent them from getting hooked. Nor, as it turns out, did their bad life experiences somehow outweigh the lack of freedom imposed on everyone else.
The only people more mentally ill than the overeaters and the tweakers and the junkies are the screwed-in-the-head busybodies rushing from social issue to social issue hellbent on saving people from themselves.
While willpower can be exhausted, it's also possible to increase willpower reserves via such things as exercise and meditation[1].
Personally, I think promoting education and awareness (and providing training) to people wishing to improve their willpower would be preferable to further empowering the immense coercive apparatus of the state to interfere in the minute details of our lives.
People lacking willpower will always find ways to self-sabotage, so helping them increase their willpower would be far more efficient than trying to ban every single thing that their poor willpower could render harmful to them.
It's kind of a catch-22, isn't it? Are folks on the lower third of the willpower bell curve (those who need it the most) going to be willing to endure extensive mindfulness training? Especially with all those distractions sitting in their pockets?
Well it couldn't hurt to try, to at least make it easily accessible to them. The success of Alcoholics Anonymous is a testament to people's willingness to seek help where its available.
Considering how willpower is a predictor for success in many facets of life, techniques (scientifically verified ones, not the mumbo-jumbo ones) that improve willpower and concentration would seem like perfect candidates for addition to school curricula. Meditation is generally quite a subjectively pleasant experience, so if people could be taught to do it even once they might decide to keep it up in future purely for the sensation it brings them.
The problem is that when you're talking about a free market benefiting all its actors you're talking about those actors being rational. Psychological tricks like skinner boxing really lower any credibility in that assumption.
Too look at the freedom thing another way, I may have no right to stop someone from trying to fly away off a cliff but if it looks like they are just about to jump to their doom I feel I should step in.
Though I agree it's a dangerous line that could be drawn anywhere between requirements to go to church, prohibition, scams, and the ability to sell yourself into slavery.
It will probably never end, since putting a stop to app shenanigans is very much a cat-and-mouse game, and I'm very happy that Apple isn't afraid to put devs in check. People who want to view ads for in-app currency are more than welcome to do so on the Android Marketplace.
The flipside is the market clearly doesn't think mobile games are directly worth enough to pay for making them.
The dominance of IAPs is not something engineered by the game makers, it's just that it is so much more lucrative it is what enables the production values of modern mobile titles to be what they are. Many game makers would prefer it if you could charge somewhere around $5 per title and make a decent amount from honest players, but unless you have some uberbrand crossover from console land that's not going to work.
the market clearly doesn't think mobile games are directly worth enough to pay for making them
I would argue that this pattern is an irrationality that must be corrected with force [1]:
When faced with a choice of selecting one of several available products (or possibly buying nothing), according to standard theoretical perspectives, people will choose the option with the highest cost–benefit difference. However, we propose that decisions about free (zero price) products differ, in that people do not simply subtract costs from benefits and perceive the benefits associated with free products as higher.
That is, users systematically spring for games with lower cost-benefit tradeoffs simply because they are offered for free. While this would be economically infeasible for game developers, they've figured out how to take advantage of other psychological breakdowns to extract revenue. On a larger scale I'm not sure this makes users as happy as they could be.
>That is, users systematically spring for games with lower cost-benefit tradeoffs simply because they are offered for free.
Except that's not what the paper says. It just notes that the decision-making process that goes on in people's heads doesn't just include the monetary cost (duh), and that when one option is "free" some other non-monetary factor is revealed (e.g., removing the mental cost of even having to do a cost/benefit analysis).
That said, I'm troubled by your notion that when people's actual behaviour does not conform to a model, the problem is with the people.
I'm not saying that the users know that free options have lower cost-benefit tradeoffs, but in reality, experiments show that they do, specifically the on I cited.
But you raise an interesting point. It could well be that the "mental cost of even having to do a cost/benefit analysis" is too high for many people to consider paid options. That reenforces the proposal that Apple should wean users off of low (even negative) utility free options and train them to make such evaluations efficiently, the way many of us who are used to paying for software can. Again, all of this predicated on the thesis that benefit - cost - mental cost (which improves as we learn how to evaluate software) of many paid apps is higher than the average benefit of free apps.
As for my notion that people's actual behavior doesn't conform to a model of rationality, perhaps we should agree to disagree. There is plenty of research to suggest that people are bad at making calculations and require intervention.
Actually, you bring up an interesting point - perhaps Apple already does wean off users from free options. Perhaps this is a move directed at consumers and not game producers.
Apple stands to gain nothing if users don't pay up - 30% of 0 is 0. Therefore they need to eliminate 0-dollar items from the market - but you can't go straight and do it because it would cause an uproar. So they make it infeasible for game developers to offer free games, and will extract the selling commission from the resulting non-zero priced games.
It would prevent the tsunami of stupid titles from showing up. Companies would get into the game (pun intended) only if sure they had a decent product. Just as always.
The amount of trickery I have seen in IAPs is disgusting.
This is like arguing that Walmart should be banned. You might think the products are stupid, but there are enough people that don't spending money on their preferences to create the current situation. If there is a problem it is with consumers.
Admittedly this does poison the well for many other game developers, but the reality is getting attention in the current mobile market is close to impossible without an enormous spend, so conservatism of business model is going to rule the roost now.
It also doesn't help that self professed hardcore gamers undervalue mobile titles enormously, and that touch controls just aren't good enough for many purposes either.
Could you imagine a Walmart that had fast checkout lanes that charged a few dollars extra, and regular checkout lanes that didn't have baggers and deliberately went slowly, even if there wasn't anyone ahead of you in the line?
You kind of do already. You have the choice between convenient places near you which cost more or drive to out of town big box stores where things are supposedly cheaper.
Or you can buy online, and wait until tomorrow for your items but pay less again.
I'd love a store that offered that. Sometimes I go to buy something then just walk out because they're processing so long. Sometimes I'm tempted to throw down cash and walk out but I figure that might cause a security incident.
But being able to skip the line for a few bucks is great. I do the same when flying, too.
Except to make this analogy complete the store would make you wait 30 minutes to check out even if there was no one else in the store. In other words, the wait is artificial to begin with.
Paying to be prioritized in a system with limited resources is one thing, paying to get rid of an entirely artificial restriction is quite something else.
It's a video game. Everything is artificial. Following the reasoning here I would expect that a proper game would be beat when I started it and any interaction I have with it is some kind of artificial barrier that should be removed.
This logic doesn't follow. Most video games don't optimize their gameplay mechanics for conversion to micropayments - and the ones that do are widely under attack.
Sure, all mechanics in all games are man-made, but to continue the analogy, we're talking about an entirely artificial wait time to check out that's been specifically optimized to make you pay for the "express" checkout. In other words, the wait exists for no reason except to extract more money from you.
The whole core of the argument is that developers used to optimize the mechanics of the game for fun and enjoyment, and now instead optimize the mechanics for how frequently and continually they can suck money out of your pockets. There is now a gigantic philosophical and developmental gap between the "pay once" and "pay monthly" business models and the "pay always" business model.
Agreed on the checkout, but the flying thing always struck me as stupid. You spend some extra dollars so you can skip ahead and... spend longer on the plane? It's not like that's any more fun than standing in a queue.
Well...if you know you can skip the line ahead of time, you don't have to get to the airport quite as early. I'd imagine that's the main draw for Clear and the other programs. Plus not having to take off your shoes etc.
Not getting molested comes at a price: $85 for pre-check status. That said, you also have to hand over your social media history and web browsing history. Its required for your KTN.
Handing over social media and web browsing history for KTN... sarcasm? If not, I'm curious to see a source - never heard anything about that sort of screening and a quick google didn't pull anything either.
First, at the security line, there's no benefit for hanging around outside. And you can go later - I usually show up an hour before boarding, even for international. Skipping security lines means unlikely to miss boarding.
Being able to skip boarding line means a: I can hang out in the lounge until a bit later, or b: get on the plane earlier so I can order drinks, get comfy and start sleeping or reading or whatever.
Being up front also means getting in before a ton of people at customs, sometimes. So that might be another 30-40 minutes of standing around in some cases (or worse).
Surely all foot traffic should be considered equal, and we shouldn't be both paying for a product and then paying again for how we get out of the store!
They have this in South America, it's called "preferred checkout." Seems pretty standard as far as I can tell (they don't go deliberately slow, but they're deliberately understaffed).
My guess was this is more likely to offed American consumer's egalitarian sentiment and the revenue from membership would pale in comparison to the PR hit. Or maybe it's just inertia from early grocery store practices.
I could imagine that, and it would be a bit silly and (I'd guess) not too successful, but I certainly wouldn't find it offensive or somehow morally wrong.
This isn't limited to games, though. My experience is that people see "app on my phone" and think "disposable, like kleenex--and should cost about as much as a single sheet of the stuff."
One shouldn't underestimate the sheer effort required to get even trivial revenue from any one app, regardless of genre or quality.
* Companies would get into the game (pun intended) only if sure they had a decent product. Just as always.*
You highly overestimate the ability to judge a winner ahead of time. If only the products we knew we're going to be "decent" got made, we'd have a considerably less innovative society.
Not to mention that this is all just completely subjective. I know plenty of people hat are legitimately happy with their "trash games" (just like certain tv...), and who am I to explain to them what they should actually like?
Your trickery is someone else's fun game, though. It's a larger philosophical question if you have the right to stop someone from "being taken advantage of" if they are a willing, informed, enthusiastic participant in the process.
The trickery is definitely an issue. But I don't have any problem with allowing users to watch an ad or watch a video promoting another app in exchange for more coins, or more 'points' in order to continue playing a game.
The flipside is the market clearly doesn't think mobile games are directly worth enough to pay for making them.
But it doesn't necessarily follow that mobile games have to be digital crack. If a game can't survive on <$100 of IAPs per user, I'd be happy to see that game not exist.
Why not just ignore the existence of it? I have a feeling that the way this conversation is headed is toward app marketplaces having separate categories for with-IAP apps and without-IAP apps. It's clear to me that many consumers are very happy with the IAP option, whereas many are completely repulsed by it. Apple and Google should help both groups find the apps that appeal to them.
You're asking why have consumer protection systems at all, more or less. And the answer is that some people make poor choices that hurt society as a whole - both by putting themselves in vulnerable positions, and by rewarding the exploiter's bad behavior.
Here's the simple measuring stick: If spending money on IAP is a substitute for skill in terms of game progression, it's a societal negative.
It exploits those least able to make good decisions. And it ruins what may have once been good games for the rest of us. What might be a really good game is distorted by the IAP market. You are monetarily rewarded for adding subtle gates that are very difficult to pass without spending money.
And worst thing about all this? Ask the people who spend a bunch of money if they really think the game is fun. Go ahead - ask them.
I suspect that an element of (for example) Candy Crush's success is that it is actually very close to what people are looking for out of a game. People who self-identify as "gamers" are likely repulsed by it, but they are generally not the people who Candy Crush was made for.
IMO the market doesn't think mobile games are woth enough to pay _without_prior_testing_ . These mobile apps platforms should relly offer a better structure for demos. Remember the sharewares ?
I'm not sure the desire to not want things to exist that other people are choosing to use. I don't like many romantic comedies, sure, but I don't then additionally desire they not exist altogether. I am capable of accepting that there exists a segment of the market that doesn't interest me but (clearly) satisfies a large group of other people. Let's not forget that the flip side to this may be a return to just having a few AAA titles.
Free-to-play games aren't going away anytime soon and neither are IAPs. Consumers just don't pay for games anymore and a developer has to make money somehow. I like what Apple is doing by forcing developers to make more ethical games.
There's apps that offers "credits" to access features on an ad-hoc basis that would otherwise require a full subscription. That's actually cheaper for some people and allows them to try it out without committing to a full subscription.
Steam users or console owners have spent time, money or both just to have the equipment to play games. I'm guessing that the same market that buys consoles buys smartphones, so they may be more likely to buy good phone games. But maybe not! I mean, they have a console at home so if a game they want is cross platform maybe they prefer to play it on that?
The gaming experience is also hugely different. They are converging, but there are still so many differences. That blazing fast new processor doesn't do much for controls, screen size, battery life, multiplayer - all of these are things that stop phones from competing with consoles directly. My guess is this is a reason that the top games are time wasters.
Compare the most popular free games on Steam and consoles with mobile devices. Off the top of my head, Candy Crush Saga and multiple free Angry Birds titles have over 100m downloads on Google Play alone.
I would say mobile games are viewed as more disposible than PC or Console games.
Developers can pull a game from the Android or iOS markets at any time and unless you somehow made a backup, you'll never get to play it again if you happened to reset your device or get a new one. With steam though, my game library stays there, even if the developer no longer sells the game on Steam (happened with the Wolfenstein game that came out a few years ago). Also, many mobile games also depend on server side resources and won't function without them.
I for some reason can't reply to your other comments but the difference between consoles and phone games is that free games actually exists for phones. You can't buy an XBox and have access to hundreds of the most popular games for free. People buy an XBox knowing that they will have to buy games. People who buy phones, know that the app store or google play contains thousands of free offerings.
Note that Apple's efforts might drive up the prices of games and IAPs. Consider the effect of an app offering rewards to users who share it. What is the economic effect of that? The app developer is driving down their average cost of acquiring more customers. Cut that off, and suddenly the app developer has to spend more to acquire customers through some other method (advertising being the most obvious option). In order to preserve profit, revenue must go up. Consumers get slugged with more costly IAPs and apps, or greater amounts of ads within apps.
I think it's a question of offering some kind of good old demo mode for games. The problem is not that people don't pay for games (they do, see IAP) but that people don't want to pay for things without knowing what they are buying. Apple has pretty much everything in place to offer (usage) time limited demo versions of paid apps. Many IAPs are using dark UX patterns. Claiming "but they don't have a choice!" is at best naive.
Here's a review of a game that offers the first few levels free, with a single IAP to unlock the rest of the game. Everything is clear and above board and seems to follow the Doom (etc) model - playable game and pay to unlock the rest.
Sure, if the game isn't properly up-front about being a limited time demo, it rightfully feels tacky. But if you "bought" it by clicking a "try for a day" button, why would it feel tacky?
Making demos is usually a net loss for developers. There are few scenarios where the extra time and effort put into a demo actually result in increased sales [0].
I wasn't talking about "making demos". I was talking about native support in the platform to limit usage of an app to a certain time. The developer just clicks a checkbox "make 24 usage hour demo available" and that's it.
Large media catalogs need consumables. Every in app purchase item has to be approved by apple individually making it extremely impractical to list an IAP for every single item.
I can think of one - ever heard of TouchTunes? They have internet-streaming jukeboxes in many bars and restaurants. You can sign into them with your phone using their app, buy credit with an IAP, and then you spend the credit on the jukebox, selecting songs to play IRL with your phone.
It's technically IAP consumables, but it doesn't seem skeevy like the clash of clans / candy crushes of the world.
How are you going to define "consumable"? A game like clash of clans or candy crush could just restructure things so that you get to permanently "keep" your purchase, but it is still practically consumed. So for example, you could "have" an item that only worked for 15 minutes after purchase. If that's too transparent, consider some kind of level scheme where those level 3 units you bought last week are basically worthless against the level 5 unis you're up against this week. How are you going to forbid that?
The apps have a human review process. It's not like there's some algorithm that handles these kind of things.
The problem you mention is very much a "I'll know it when I see it" type thing - I'd trust Apple to bring down the hammer on someone trying to rules-lawyer their way around the restriction.
Human-reviewing the "scamminess" of an IAP at Appstore scale would be a complete disaster. Every reviewer would have to understand the full dynamics of the game before improperly labelling an IAP as scammy.
Its impractical to think every reviewer can spend enough time with every game to make the right call.
That isn't scammy. In these sorts of RTS games there are build times. Its special to not wait on those. Remember the cheat code everylittlethingshedoes in WarCraft II? How is buying access to that scammy? You don't have to buy it - and you can play the game. No one is forcing you to buy it, just as no one is forcing you to play.
The entire game is structured around annoying the player into speeding up build timers and buying other resources via very expensive consumables.
They start out reasonable, seconds to minutes, soon a day or two, and quickly scale up to the point where everything you want to do takes weeks of real time. And that's before you get into the other resources required!
Calling CoC and its mechanics an RTS is an insult to RTSes. When I queue up a Portal in Starcraft 2, I do not wait for a full week with the option to spend $4 to finish it instantly.
And another thing, the "you don't have to buy/play it" argument is really non-sequitur when we're considering app store policies whose reason for existing is banning annoying behavior. The entire point of games like CoC is to manipulate vulnerabilities in the human decision making process for great profit. CoC is basically Farmville with battles, which is crap for the same reason that Zynga and all their "games" are crap.
A simple test: Could the paid consumables be removed and replaced with game-earned items only with no negative impact to the experience? If yes, the paid consumables are probably crap.
Ever think for one moment that a mobile RTS has a different use case and different market than someone who plays Starcraft 2? Don't you think there are more of "those people", than those that will be annoyed with week build times.
If these "RTS" (keep in mind, its just marketing) games are only designed to be played a few minutes a day, over weeks and months, it could be easily continually engaging. Much like a late night show or your weekly Game of Thrones.
For that reason, you probably aren't the target market. Having a fleet of IAP testers (who are humans and get sick, quit their job, change positions) that are fully trained in all the existing games as well as being experts in game mechanics and can quickly understand new IAPs and new game types as they emerge is a very myopic and naive view of the world.
The "scam" argument boiled down to its core is really a moral judgement. With that I'd say good luck attempting to scale that and not piss someone important off.
We're talking about the Apple App Store, home of "we know evil when we see it" policies. They see lack of specificity as a feature.
Basically, people are criticizing games where it is possible to spend a ridiculously large (or inifinte) amount of money. Any loopholes should be obvious enough that they're not a problem.
A newspaper might structure their IAPs so that instead of buying a subscription or a single issue you can buy a "bundle" of issues. I.e. instead of a 1 Week subscription you buy 7 issues and the counter only decrements when you actually download one, whether that takes 7 days or 7 months to happen.
But that's not really the point anyway - there's absolutely no reason they couldn't say consumable IAPs can only be used for media. IIRC they did something similar when they started subscriptions and background content updates.
However, that would just mean that the games with consumable IAPs will switch to subscription IAPs (where the subscription is short - probably a few hours to a few days at most). I'm not sure how much better that is.
Or they will start selling media. If you search long enough, you may be able to find someone willing to borrow you that book with magical recipes, but you can also buy it in the bookshop...
The difference between digital media and game items can be made very, very small.
Also, I don't think the issue is with consumables. For example, that magic book I mentioned above becomes your property ever after in the same sense that an ebook you buy at Amazon or Apple becomes your property. Similarly, I could sell you the eternal right to take a shortcut in some virtual world. With enough shortcuts (and the matching long boring detours that people not owning the right to use them) one still can make a game that many would judge to be more an attempt at getting ever more money from its players than a game.
Finally, in real life, we are fine buying consumables all the time, and we also are willing to pay seemingly arbitrary amounts of money for them. For example, for many, $10 for a cup of coffee is absurd. Yet, there also are many who happily pay it, if the situation is right.
So, it's not selling consumables, it is milking your users that people object to.
> However, that would just mean that the games with consumable IAPs will switch to subscription IAPs (where the subscription is short - probably a few hours to a few days at most).
Apple already thought of that, and it's specifically prohibited by the App Store Review Guidelines:
> Apps may only use auto renewing subscriptions for periodicals (newspapers, magazines), business Apps (enterprise, productivity, professional creative, cloud storage) and media Apps (video, audio, voice), or the App will be rejected
There are plenty of dating apps with auto-renewing subscriptions.
I think a big problem with Apple is that the whole review process is a black box, because the documentation is thin, contrary, or non-existent. You basically have to submit and hope they accept your app and when it's rejected, the reasons are often arbitrary or contrary to previous submissions that were excepted.
I can't think of any counter examples that are available on iOS anyway, because of the sales restrictions: the two I thought of were the Kindle and Nook stores, but you can't buy books in either app because Amazon and Barnes and Noble aren't prepared to give apple a 30% cut of the sale.
I'm hoping that the Family Sharing features that require the person with the credit card to approve purchases will be the death knell for games that require IAPs.
But I agree with everyone else, IAP's are the meth in the AppStore ghetto.
(EDIT: I guess I should have clarified better: I'm not defending the crapware, social share-driven apps mentioned by the OP. There's good IAPs, and bad IAPs, and the latter should indeed be banned. I'm just against the widespread sentiment that all IAP is bad. I have no problem with Candy Crush making millions of dollars thru IAP, provided they deliver value to users)
"Consumer win" is giving them choice.
Users spend millions of dollars on IAPs, because it was relevant to them. This created an entire industry of game developers, artists, story writers, that rely on IAPs to keep their apps free.
Without IAP, they would have to charge upfront for the app. While it is certainly an option, I'd prefer to let developers and customers figure out the model they want, rather than having Apple or Google enforcing it.
Anyway, IAP is one of the most important pillars of Apple's mobile strategy, so it obviously isn't going away anytime soon.
There's a difference between short- and long-term interest. People are bad at the latter. Yes, there's demand for a free game - duh, of course people want free games. And when they have to pay a euro to get the game to really progress. Sure, why not? And then they need to pay a bit more. And they are still fine with it. But they are less and less satisfied. They try the next game - and the same thing happens. For me the end result is: I stopped looking at games for my iPhone because I have a deep mistrust for apps. Most things that look high quality turn out to be terribly designed (from a game design POV) and are just employing one dark pattern after the other to get people to make more IAPs.
So, yes, short-term there's demand. There's a market signal that says "this is totally what people want". But mid- and long-term it's bad for the platform because it leads to shitty customer/user experience. It will still make companies money for a while - but the consumers are burning away. And it's really hard to recover from that.
Apple has been more than willing to sacrifice direct profits for user experience - they'd no doubt make more money with the App Store as a free-for-all like the Play Store, but instead they don't do that, and often reject applications which would be quite lucrative for them because they don't meet the guidelines.
IAP isn't going away, but seeing Apple burn a little bit of potential profit to keep the store relatively high quality shouldn't be that surprising.
This sort of close-minded mentality is why I don't use any Apple products. If these games were "spam", then millions of consumers wouldn't be spending so much money on IAPs.
These ads pushers are already circumventing the app store. FreeMyApps uses a website and iOS device profile instead. Will Apple revoke their certificates?
http://welcome.freemyapps.com/howitworks-ios.html
I suspect Apple will end up making changes to ad-hoc provisioning which prevent sites like FreeMyApps from operating. This is very clearly not the way that ad-hoc provisioning was intended to be used.
Two of my favorite games at the moment use consumable IAPs, and I think it they have a good model.
Real Racing 3, and Trials Frontier both offer consumable IAPs that mostly remove waiting, or a boring portion of the gameplay. One can compete in game to earn the same money, and wait for repairs... or they can spend money and keep playing. So far I have not spent any money on these games (I am not a good target market for much of anything, so don't read too much into me playing free games), but I enjoy them a lot, and the developers are making a decent business out of it.
Consumable IPAs give developers a chance to get as much money as possible from each person playing. From me that might be $0, but many people are likely to spend more than the $4.99 that would otherwise be the target app price. This seems like the ideal business model to me.
"Your house will finish building in 12 hours - or spend 2 golden donuts ($4.99) to have it finish building right now!"
And the bad thing is, there is no filter in the store for these junk applications. Gameloft has a really fun game called Rival Knights, but I stopped playing because after 10 levels of making me like the game, they started asking me to wait more and more to keep playing - or guess guess: Buy some "Royal Ribbons" (play tokens) for real money.
What a crock! I have a kickass ipad but I can't find honest games that don't nickel and dime me.
I couldn't agree more. IAP have destroyed sandbox games. I love the old Sim Tower and Moon Tycoon games. I would love a port of them to mobile. Sandbox games nowadays are all about trying to squeeze every last penny out of the customer.
I have an Android tablet and the best way to find honest games (in my experience) has been buying Humble Bundles. Most of the games in them are probably on iOS too (I've heard a lot premier for Android there from iOS) so it could be worth checking out their past bundles.
Actually I just googled and found http://honestandroidgames.com/ - same deal, the good ones are probably on iOS too with the same model.
OP is not suggesting they ban all IAP, just consumable ones, which tend to be the most abusive. It would be a bold move and lead to an increase in quality for sure. It would also gut companies like zynga who design their games around them.
Looking at Candy Crash and how Apple incessantly pimps it in every way possible, I think it's bloody obvious that they are getting A TON of money from consumable IAP commissions.
I don't think anyone is questioning whether Apple makes money from consumable IAPs. What we're questioning is whether that factor dominates all others, which it observably does not.
As far as Apple promoting Candy Crush, there's a question about whether this is a cause or effect of its popularity.
Let's go even further and have them ban consumable IAPs. There's almost no legitimate use case for them other than creating pretend currencies that make people hit the skinner box lever harder and spend more money.