Apple begins rejecting apps that offer rewards for video views, social sharing

http://techcrunch.com/2014/06/09/apple-begins-rejecting-apps-that-offer-rewards-for-video-views-social-sharing/

by jasonpbecker • 12 years ago

225 190 12 years ago

gergles• 12 years ago

Good riddance.

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.

xienze• 12 years ago

I doubt that'll happen as Apple gets a cut of IAP.

soup10• 12 years ago

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.

jamesaguilar2• 12 years ago

There are plenty of precedents for Apple banning things that, not banned, would earn them money. One example is the, "I am rich" app.

dangero• 12 years ago

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.

r00fus• 12 years ago

You mean large media catalogs that don't have flat subscription pricing. Netflix does fine without IAP.

Do you have a counter example?

chollida1• 12 years ago

Could you please define IAP?

Google is of no use here and wikipedia links to this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IAP

None of which look right:)

nivloc• 12 years ago

In-App Purchase

asolove• 12 years ago

I assume "in-app purchase"

sergiotapia3• 12 years ago

"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.

freemanios• 12 years ago

What about iOS apps like Viggle that have the same model but for music and tv? https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/viggle/id487066871?mt=8

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

duskwuff2• 12 years ago

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.

dmalik• 12 years ago

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.

This Gamasutra article on ethical free-to-play gaming comes to mind and foreshadowed Apples move - http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/207779/ethical_freetop...

Edit: I'm referring to mobile - "New research shows free-to-play on mobile isn't slowing down" http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/211333/New_research_shows...

wmf5• 12 years ago

There are good IAPs (like permanent unlocks) and bad IAPs (like consumables).

TillE3• 12 years ago

Consumers just don't pay for games anymore

This is completely absurd. Look at Steam. Or every game console.

jkrems5• 12 years ago

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.

jfoster5• 12 years ago

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.

tomelders• 12 years ago

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.

MBCook4• 12 years ago

Tricking kids is one thing but I expect a large portion of the sales are just adults who are willing to pay.

w1ntermute2• 12 years ago

If people want to waste their money on consumable IAPs, I don't see why Apple (or anyone else, for that matter) should prevent it.

bentcorner• 12 years ago

Personally, my problem is not with consumable IAPs, it's spending talented developer effort on games I will never play.

sergiotapia3• 12 years ago

I consider those games spam, and luckily so does Apple. It's a consumer win.

fidotron3• 12 years ago

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.

gtirloni• 12 years ago

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.

stanleydrew• 12 years ago

Perhaps it would be alright if all the games that can't be sold for $5 each just didn't exist?

wmf5• 12 years ago

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.

siglesias4• 12 years ago

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.

1) http://web.mit.edu/ariely/www/MIT/Papers/zero.pdf

fla• 12 years ago

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 ?

hackerboos• 12 years ago

Let's go even further and have them ban consumable IAPs.

No chance whilst Apple gets a 30% cut.

gearoidoc4• 12 years ago

The legitimate use case is that it creates a viable business model:

http://themodernprogrammer.com/post/app-store-dollars-dont-g...

adamio• 12 years ago

The best example is casino apps. They are selling screen taps to users on their own phones.

ataggart2• 12 years ago

I am reminded of a quote:

"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?

arg01• 12 years ago

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.

rmrfrmrf• 12 years ago

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.

siglesias4• 12 years ago

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."

1) http://danariely.com/2012/08/15/understanding-ego-depletion/

chrisBob2• 12 years ago

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.

ashbrahma• 12 years ago

I feel bad for all the developers who are going to see a substantial drop in revenues from incentivized video ads. But as a user, I am happy to see this change. Developers have been very abusive with in-game credits.

coldcode• 12 years ago

It's about time. It's not only games that do this, even brand name companies pay for positioning via incentivized downloads from these marketing companies.

minikites• 12 years ago

[W]here a confused developer wonders, “so we can’t encourage users to share stuffs [sic] on social networks anymore? This is one of the oldest tricks in the book and even Candy Crush uses it.”

"Even Candy Crush uses it" is not the best argument for this developer's point. It is the best argument for Apple's shift in enforcement.

jbigelow76• 12 years ago

Step 1, eliminate all marketing channels outside of the official App store.

Step 2, charge developers for "sponsored" placement in the App store.

superuser23• 12 years ago

marketing channels

When your "marketing channel" is my Facebook news feed, then yes, this is absolutely what should happen.

mrtksn2• 12 years ago

I don't agree with the example about Candy Crush integration with facebook for asking friends for lives. I don't think it's in the same category with "share on facebook to earn free gold" kind of practices, which are what Apple is after for in my opinion.

hrktb• 12 years ago

I don't play much games on iOS, so without further information it seems both are directed at pushing friends to install/log into the game. What points fundamentally differ in your opinion ?

justplay• 12 years ago

Thats very good move, i guess.

seanalltogether• 12 years ago

So where do you draw the line between viewing advertisements to play the game, and viewing advertisements to enhance the game? What makes a video view for gold coins different from an ad view to proceed to the next screen? I don't fully understand the distinction here?

exodust2• 12 years ago

Perhaps the concern for Apple is that one of those methods circumvents Apple's ad network, the other cannot?

Would this be a fair guess? I'm not fully understanding Apple's motivation here either unless it was about bringing Apple back in as a dependency on ad revenue rather than sidelined.

lhnz• 12 years ago

Great but as many have pointed out the biggest problem with the App Store is that IAP has made pricing completely opaque.

The whole experience is completely untrustworthy as an app which requires an average spend of £20+ to use properly is considered more "Free" than an app which costs £2.99.

It's made a complete mockery of prices.

Fixed prices are popular for a reason and I hope Apple learns this and starts properly surfacing information as well as categorising based on the reality of an App's "price."

redler2• 12 years ago

It would be interesting if the app store displayed the median total expenditure for any application that includes IAP. How would buying behavior be affected when suddenly that "free" game includes a note like "$59 median total spent"?

[Edit: clarity]

avalaunch• 12 years ago

I think the median for "free" apps with IAPs would almost always be 0. My guess is that the vast majority of people don't pay anything with a small minority making up the bulk of the app's profits.

What you really need is a value that represents that amount you need to pay to actually enjoy the app which would be a lot harder to quantify.

MattHeard• 12 years ago

Or instead of a single number representing the average, show a distribution of the mean total spent by each centile of users.

You'll likely see a long flat line at 0 for the first 95% and then a steep curve up for the last 5%.

If an app has high-quality in-app purchases, you will likely see that the curve slopes up slower.

lucian1900• 12 years ago

The "free" one can at least be tried at no cost. I'm quite annoyed with the iOS App Store keeping my money for several apps that are entirely non-functional.

sprite4• 12 years ago

What I find annoying is that they did this with no warning. I got an app rejected a few days ago. I have a coin model in my apps. The users can a) Complete actions within the apps to earn coins b) Purchase coins through IAPs c) Watch video ads for coins d) Complete offers for coins. Many users have expressed that they were happy with the system, especially the video ads, with reviews such as "I wish there was more videos to watch for coins". With only around 2% of users spending money on IAPs, offers and videos are a good way to monetize at least a portion of the remaining 98%.

sergiotapia3• 12 years ago

Your type of app is the reason why the App store is full of spammy garbage. Good riddance! I hope Apple actually encourage better apps without these skeevy practices.

sprite4• 12 years ago

The app has a 5 star rating in the app store. No users have complained in any way.

wsidell• 12 years ago

I don't understand the problem. There is a percentage of users that will never spend money on your app. Generally, those users do like being able to earn app functionality by completing tasks such as watching a video.

I see it as a win as a consumer and a win as a developer.

spada• 12 years ago

crap like this one reason why buying quality traffic is difficult.

sprite4• 12 years ago

I'm not sure what you mean. I monetize through Ad Colony and SuperSonic Ads. The publishers know they are buying incentivized traffic.

sprite4• 12 years ago

Here is the complete rejection text for any app with AdColony rewarded video ads. The ads may not even be for apps:

Reasons

3.10: Developers who attempt to manipulate or cheat the user reviews or chart ranking in the App Store with fake or paid reviews, or any other inappropriate methods will be removed from the iOS Developer Program 3.10

We found that your app, or its metadata, includes features or content that can have an excessive influence in the listing order or ranking on the App Store, which is not in compliance with the App Store Review Guidelines.

Specifically, we found your app provides users coins for watching a video or trailer and subscribing a third party service. It would be appropriate to remove this information.

Please refer to the attached screenshot for more information.

While your iTunes Connect Application State is Rejected, a new binary will be required. Make the desired metadata changes when you upload the new binary.

jobu• 12 years ago

Incentivizing users to watch videos could be bad for advertisers, but I can't understand how it would negatively impact Apple or any users.

It doesn't increase downloads unless the app in the video looks decent enough to interest a user, and that seems like it increases app discoverability - something I think Apple would actually want.

increment_i2• 12 years ago

Wow, are you serious? People will watch ads for game credits? Thank goodness I was a kid in the 90s before this wackiness pervaded the gaming industry.

I'm not knocking you BTW - the market will bear what it will bear - but, wow I had no idea this was a thing.

increment_i2• 12 years ago

Only on Hacker News would you get downvoted for questioning advertising.

MBCook4• 12 years ago

I've done it in lieu of paying for consumables. I'm not going to pay the money, but I'm willing to tap a button and do something else for 30 seconds while I wait for my phone to play a video I'm ignoring.

wvenable2• 12 years ago

In the 90's you probably watched 10 minutes of ads in exchange for 20 minutes of Television more times than you can count.

exodust2• 12 years ago

Have we forgotten the days of "insert coin(s) to continue"?

Arcade games holding my progress to ransom was "accepted" in the 80s and 90s. Fast forward to today and watching a video for 30 seconds to gain more credits is unacceptable?

bobbles• 12 years ago

I'm surprised anyone is willing to pay money for these video ads to be included when the process for them being 'viewed' includes the person putting their phone on silent and doing something else for the 30 seconds or so the ad plays

jfoster5• 12 years ago

Are you sure? I think the average amount of attention such ads receive may actually be higher than your typical facebook or Google Content Network ad. The person is waiting for the ad to end to get on with what they wanted to do. Chances are pretty good they might be watching it.

wvenable2• 12 years ago

My wife plays a game and she doesn't mind the "watch video ad for in game credits" model. I'm honestly not sure what the hate is about. If you don't like it, don't play the game.

chrisBob2• 12 years ago

My guess is that the restriction originated with pressure from advertisers. It is hard to determine if a user is actually interested in an add if there is an incentive for clicking and watching.

I see that you report your advertisers are aware, but if Apple chooses this for the ads they manage then I am not surprised they would enforce it universally so that developers don't move away from iADs.

jarsj• 12 years ago

IAP Ranters. Here is a story. A real one.

I take a coffee break and fire the addictive social game "Boom Beach".

My troops are ready and I am ready to attack the neighbors.

I buy a 5 USD tea + 3 USD water bottle (both I can get free at my office).

The attack doesn't go well. One little error. My break is about to end, but I want to try one more time. Just that, it will take 2 hours to train my troops.

Or Wait, 1.99 USD to speed that up. Hours of planning, that went for the attack and just 2 USD to find out if I was right or wrong. Is it worth it ? I look at my coffee and water, the time, the ending break, the distractions till this is resolved. It's worth it. And while I am putting in 2USD, might as well take the 10USD deal for next 20 battles. Better spent than "expensive-than-movie" popcorn. Ban that first.

Steko2• 12 years ago

I've been playing boom beach for several months and haven't spent a penny. In the same time I've spent over $100 on two lackluster blizzard expansion packs for d3 and sc2. Given the amount of time I've spent and enjoyed the game I don't begrudge people in my position that do spend money. And no it doesn't 2 hours to train troops and there are plenty of free gems.

Greenisus2• 12 years ago

I haven't spent any money on Boom Beach either, but it can take over 2 hours to train troops if you're at max level using all tanks (4 per boat at 36 minutes each = 144 minutes).

coralreef• 12 years ago

Or, you could practice discretionary income discipline and not buy things you don't need?

pjc502• 12 years ago

Interesting how the normally libertarian HN is very much against a "free market" in apps, preferring that Apple get to dictate who earns money instead.

bigdubs• 12 years ago

Libertarianism is fun and games until that freedom bites you.

iand• 12 years ago

HN is not one homogeneous mass of people. There are libertarians who write pro-free market comments and there are authoritarians who write the opposite.

threeseed• 12 years ago

Exactly and Google is also disgraceful. How dare Google filter spam when the "free market" should decide what emails are received.

ojanik• 12 years ago

Your example makes no sense. Market has decided and wants to use a tool like spam filter.

curmudgeon224• 12 years ago

Random thoughts:

They are supposedly now banning keywords in titles so you won't be seeing more title like Floopy Bird - incredibly fun additive threes 2048 game. Good.

As for banning incentivized social actions: that really sucks if you aren't one of the companies (like King, Zynga, etc) that have really benefited from the growth of using those incentivized actions. Developers that came before you won't be punished and you are now going to have to spend your way to the top. Good luck with that.

One rumor is that they are banning some incentivized video ad networks because ads were coming up with Google Play logos. Oops.

Anyways - the long and short of it is, while the policies are probably net positive for the consumer, the people that gamed the system early still win.

DigitalSea• 12 years ago

This is a change I wholeheartedly agree with. The prompts in games to make you watch advertisements or download other apps for game credits was always to me a bit iffy. I am glad to see Apple officially forbidding these kind of moves. Developers of free-to-play games will just find other clever ways of making money off of free users, whether that be prompting you to spend real money on in-app purchases or even forcing you too at some point: who knows what will happen.

jfoster5• 12 years ago

Interestingly, Google seems headed in the opposite direction. They've even released an app that lets users complete surveys in exchange for Google Play credit.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.and...

jasonkostempski• 12 years ago

Good. Start with Angry Birds Star Wars telepods and don't let them back in if they remove it. Rovio really ruined the good thing they had going by getting way too greedy.

mikeash2• 12 years ago

If Apple would just open up sideloading, all of the controversy could just go away.

ceejayoz• 12 years ago

In exchange for the "malware on iOS!" controversy? No thanks.

mikeash2• 12 years ago

Malware is kept at bay by the sandbox. App review does jack squat to stop malware. Sideloaded apps could still be sandboxed.

Downvoters: please explain yourself. Is what I said incorrect?

finalight• 12 years ago

does this mean hay day is gone?

pratyushag• 12 years ago

The clause of being able to promote apps that are made by the same publisher will have a very significant impact on the industry and could even lead to more consolidation and a significant disadvantage for independent developers. In fact, I think this could lead to a business opportunity for publishing as a service whereby a developer can host their app with a partner and get paid based on the number of ads clicked, impressions, etc.

Overall, an unfriendly move for developers. I think it might be time to buy some Zynga ;-).

Apple begins rejecting apps that offer rewards for video views, social sharing

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