The iOS App Store might be a walled garden, but that’s not to say that developers and publishers don’t have the elbow room to engage in some of the principals of capitalism, like cross-promotions. Just don’t be surprised if one day, Apple routs you out.
The latest example of Apple clamping down on developers for engaging in practices that they don’t quite think is critic is the crackdown on pay-to-install apps, which now appears to be in effect, with publisher TapJoy claiming that Apple is actively banning such apps from the App Store.
What’s a pay-to-install app? Essentially, it’s a form of cross-promotion with freemium games in which a player can get in-game goods, currency or other items by downloading another app. In other words, say you want some more f***ing Smurfberries, you could just download another app to get a free infusion…. which, in turn, would probably want you to download some other app to get an item, ad infinitim de pukum.
From Apple’s perspective, the problem with pay-to-install apps is that it artificially inflates download numbers. I can see their point, but as TapJoy is quick to point out, nothing in the Developer Program License Agreement actually precludes pay-to-install apps. Well, no, and I suppose there’s nothing in the ToS per se that prevents an app from collecting users’ addresses and then mailing them a sopping sack of indeterminate meat slurry either, but my guess is Apple would quickly add a provision in the ToS for this unexpected new development. The Dev Agreement isn’t the Ten Commandments, guys.
John Brownlee is a writer for Fast Company, and a contributing writer here at CoM. He has also written for Wired, Playboy, Boing Boing, Popular Mechanics, VentureBeat, and Gizmodo. He lives in Boston with his wife and two parakeets. You can follow him here on Twitter.
12 responses to “Apple Starts Banning Pay-To-Install Apps”
Hope that mean Angry Birds isn’t one of those.
Don’t they mean the same thing as “in-app purchases”?
No, those are NOT the same as in-app purchases. Come on, why would Apple ban their own feature? Therefore, Angry Birds will not be affected because it doesn’t have an in-game currency that can be purchased or given to players in exchange for downloading another app. The main apps that would be affected by this ban would be simulation games like Farmville and the “Story” games (e.g. City Story, Farm Story, etc.).
Yes my exposure to these kinds of apps, was short, but I was merely downloading the app to affect something in another app. The Tap Tap Revenge series used this to open up new songs to the player, most of the time the other apps were complete junk
John,
Where you say “don’t quite think is critic ” I think you mean to be using a form of the saying, “not quite cricket” the meaning of which is to allude to fair play. Otherwise that statement makes no sense, well for me anyway…
Nooooooooo please don’t ban the Gun Bros :D I love playing it when I want to kill some time.
PS: and there’s no way I’m gonna pay for in-game items but I guess some do happily and crazily
Nope. I think the confusion is in the term that John is using.
Cross promoting apps might be a better term. In the sense that app X has some bonus thing in it and they say you can have it for free if you download app y that they also make.
That download, of something you didn’t perhaps actually want or ever intend to download, goes to their ranking as a popular app. Making it seem more popular than it is. Which isn’t really very fair.
I actually stopped playing a few games cause of this particular tactic.