Add Russia to the list of countries investigating the App Store. It is reportedly looking into whether Apple’s policy forbidding iPhone developers from telling customers about alternate — and possibly cheaper — payment options is a violation of its antitrust laws.
The U.S. and other countries are asking that same question.
Apple has been ordered by a federal judge to allow iPhone software developers to point customers to their own websites to make in-app purchases. Previously, Apple required all these transactions to happen through its payment system. The change will prevent the iPhone-maker from collecting 15% to 30% of the revenue from transactions that go through developers’ direct payment systems.
This is the primary result of the Epic Games v. Apple lawsuit. And it’s exactly what Epic asked for in the first place.
A Welsh doctor let his 7-year-old play a game on his iPhone for an hour and ended up with a whopping $1,800 bill for in-app purchases.
Apple refunded the man $290, but he had to sell his Toyota to cover the rest of the bill.
If the judge in the Epic Games v. Apple lawsuit decides to rule against the iPhone-maker, she may have already signaled the significant App Store change she would order to satisfy the game developer’s complaints.
The judge asked a question that shows she’s considering allowing developers to point customers to their own websites to make in-app purchases. Currently, these purchases must go through Apple’s payment system.
The latest insider info brought to light by the Epic Games v. Apple trial is the lengths the Mac-maker went to convince Netflix to continue taking subscriptions in its iPhone/iPad app. But Netflix stopped anyway, and Apple took no action.
When Epic Games tried to do something similar, Apple banned all its software from the App Store.
Developers of iPhone applications that include in-app purchases and subscriptions can now make them part of Family Sharing. This allows a family to share an item or subscription — at the developer’s discretion.
This is already a feature of Apple’s own services. A family can share a subscription to Apple Arcade or Apple TV+, for example. With this change for third-party apps, the Family Sharing option should become more widely available.
A cyber-security firm in the United Kingdom has identified 32 iOS apps that it dubs “fleeceware” for subscriptions and in-app fees that amount to a form of online fraud.
More than 3.5 million iOS users installed the apps, most of which were image editors, QR and barcode scanners, horoscope and fortune-telling apps and face filters for selfies. Two astrology apps making the list are among the first 20 in top-grossing iPhone apps in the UK.
Lego Tower, the newest game from Tiny Tower developer NimbleBit, has landed on iOS.
The free-to-play title lets you build a Lego skyscraper world, with apartments, hospitals, stores, and more. The higher you build, the more options you have — and you’ll collect a bunch of awesome Lego toys along the way.
Mario Kart Tour’s first beta test kicked off this week. Nintendo asked testers to refrain from posting images and videos online, but that was never going to happen. And that’s great for those of us who didn’t get beta invites.
Screenshots and clips of the game have now started popping up all over the place. There’s a lot to be excited about if you’re a Mario Kart fan, but it’s not all good news.
Nothing pleases Nintendo more than fans enjoying its game, but the Japanese company doesn’t want them spending too much on in-app purchases.
Nintendo has reportedly told development partners like DeNA that it wants them to limit micro-transactions to prevent its loyal fanbase from dumping too much of their hard-earned cash into free-to-play titles.
Apple has updated its App Store Review Guidelines to allow the gifting of in-app purchases.
Shoppers have long been able to gift apps and games, but Apple’s rules previously prohibited the purchase of in-app items for others. You probably won’t be able to gift in-app purchases in time for the holidays, however.
Apple has updated its App Store guidelines to include new rules for remote desktop clients.
Apps can no longer display a “store-like interface” that allows users to “browse, select, or purchase software” they don’t already own, but they can allow transactions if they are processed by a host device.
The change comes just a few weeks after Steam Link for iOS was rejected by Apple because it allowed purchasing inside PC games. It’s not yet clear whether the new rules pave the way for Steam Link’s approval.
Apple today introduced two new low-cost pricing tiers for macOS and iOS apps sold in Europe. The change comes as price increases came into effect in Tuesday morning’s refresh as a result of exchange rate fluctuations.
I work on an iPhone app called Reps & Sets as a hobby project in my spare time. This week, my partner and I came to the conclusion that there is no future for our app as a paid download, so we have reluctantly decided to make it free.
This was an incredibly tough call, because we have invested literally thousands of hours in developing our app over the years. Giving all that hard work away for free is heartbreaking. But we didn’t feel we had much choice.
Aside from a few big developers, no-one much likes in-app purchases, which have long been used to ruin mobile gaming on iOS.
However, the parents of 7-year-old Faisall Shugaa probably like them less than most — after their son racked up almost $6,000 in IAP bills, including $2,200 spent in just one hour.
All of the games Nintendo is currently planning for Android and iOS will be free-to-play titles, according to development partner DeNA. That means you won’t have to pay a penny to download them — but they will almost certainly be filled with in-app purchases.
Sloppy coding in some popular iOS games allows hackers to give themselves and others thousands of dollars’ worth of in-app purchases for free.
The hole was discovered by developers at DigiDNA, creator of a backup tool called iMazing that allows iPhone and iPad users to access their devices’ hidden file systems. The developers found that the app backup/restore feature in iMazing 1.3 exposes weaknesses in the way games like Angry Birds 2 and Tetris Free handle in-app purchases.
To demonstrate how easy it is to hack in-app purchases using this method, the DigiDNA team tweaked Angry Birds 2 to start the game with 999,999,999 gems — the equivalent of $10,000 of in-game credits.
Today marks the official roll-out of Apple’s long-awaited mobile payments service, Apple Pay. But while paying for items in-store using your iPhone is definitely an exciting prospect, Cupertino expects in-app purchases will make up the vast majority of early transactions, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Hit TV show Family Guy followed a trajectory that’s very similar to Apple’s. The show appeared as a breath of fresh air early on, underwent a decline during which it almost vanished, then made a triumphant return.
In that way, Family Guy always seemed a perfect fit for iOS. Earlier this year, that pairing finally happened when developer TinyCo debuted Family Guy: The Quest for Stuff, a mobile game that follows Peter Griffin and the rest of the Fox TV show’s colorful supporting cast as they rebuild the town of Quahog after it’s been destroyed.
Six months down the line — and with the game currently in the middle of a haunting, courtesy of its Halloween update — Cult of Mac spoke with the developers about Seth McFarlane, making games funny, and the perils of in-app purchases.
New figures released by app analytics firm App Annie show that mobile users are more likely than ever to pay for music services by way of in-app purchases.
Looking at figures from August, streaming music offerings from Spotify, Pandora and Beats Music were among the top earning apps in terms of revenue.
The European Commission has issued some words to Google and Apple about both companies’ steps to ensure children don’t rack up huge amounts of money on in-app purchases without their parents’ permission.
In a statement released by the Commission on Friday, Google is praised for a series of changes that will be put in effect by the end of September — while Apple finds itself on the receiving end of some harsh criticism.
If you’re an iOS gamer, chances are you’re fed up of games loaded to the gunwales with in-app purchases. The so-called “freemium” trend for games is annoying for two main reasons: One, in many cases it makes games virtually unplayable if you won’t shell out the extra cash for IAPs. Two, it’s misleading because the games aren’t really “free” at all, any more than you could say that it’s free to go to the theater, but you have to pay cash if you want to actually watch a movie.
It’s this second point that antitrust authorities in Italy are taken issue with, under the heading of unfair commercial practices. They’re investigating Apple, Google and Amazon, alongside French game developer Gameloft, for allegedly misleading customers by advertising mobile game apps as free, when they actually require purchases in order to be played beyond a certain point.
Has your child bankrupted you in Smurfberries? Had a child who maxed out your credit card on in-app purchases? Good news. Apple is now writing to some iTunes account holders, telling them they may be liable for a refund.
Are you a parent who nearly lost his or her mind and committed an act of infanticide when you discovered that your happy little sprog, in the space of five minutes playing unsupervised with your iPhone, somehow amassed an iTunes bill of over $1,000 in frickin’ Smurfberries? Well, Apple’s ready to help you, but even if you were only burnt for less than $30 because of the way in-app purchases used to work, Apple is ready to fork over a $5 iTunes gift card as a way o make amends… and settle a class-action lawsuit.
Asian messaging service Line, which has been a big success on iOS, turned over $58 million in revenue during the first quarter of 2013 with its new monetization model. But it’s just been dealt a massive blow by Apple.
The Cupertino company has unexplainably forced Line to remove its gift sharing feature, which allowed users to send stickers priced around $1.99 to their friends.
