

Indie Dev Rants About App Store at GDC, Apple Pulls Game - matthew-wegner
http://kotaku.com/5497459/apple-bans-game-days-after-developer-publicly-trashes-app-store

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mechanical_fish
_Possibility 2: Zits & Giggles' creators also kept raising the price of their
game — as an experiment — up to $400 as of last week._

What we have here is a textbook case of "burying the lede". The headline on
this article is ridiculous linkbait.

Here's are some simple UX design rules:

There should be no point on a phone's screen which costs $400 to touch.

If you absolutely must have a button which costs $400 to touch, it should have
a UI that works hard to communicate this to the user and to make it very
difficult to do so by accident. Think: Confirmation dialog with RED warning
message containing words like "$400". Or whatever. Given the stakes, you
should probably do some user testing on your interface to ensure that your
customers understand it.

Moreover, you must not embed your button that costs $400 to touch in an
environment where everything else costs $1.99 or $2.99 or, at most, perhaps
$9.99. If you're making an app for writing checks, that's okay, but it should
look like an app for writing checks and be installed in the "check-writing
apps" section of the store, so that people have plenty of environmental
signals warning what they're getting into. You should not embed your "empty my
bank account" button in a screenful of silly games that appeal to drunk people
in bars.

Finally, a button that costs $400 to touch should have an undo option if at
all possible. The undo option should not force people to read their credit
card bills and institute a chargeback, which is a depressing pain in the neck.

If you casually disobey these design rules because you're conducting an
"experiment", you are a sociopath and nobody should do business with you.
Apple is no longer doing business with this person. Smart move.

~~~
cookiecaper
Almost none of that is in any app developer's control. That's all on the Apple
side of things.

~~~
derefr
Of course—but if Apple doesn't want to _do_ that design, they really shouldn't
be allowing people to set $400 as a price for an App in the first place. In
fact, I'd say that any price over $40 should get the developer a phone call
with the App Store marketing department (you know, the one that chooses apps
for "Staff Picks" and arranges large front-page banners and such) asking them
whether they're sure about the app's "value placement" in the store.

~~~
c1sc0
Actually, they do this: they call devs when the price seems 'off' on _initial_
review. Subsequent price changes are not reviewed I think.

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wrs
Presumably, people misread the price (299 = 2.99) and Apple got tired of the
credit card chargebacks.

The App Store agreement is one of the most one-sided things I've ever seen.
Pulling the app is one of the nicer things they could have done to punish this
behavior.

For example, on a return, the app store agreement allows Apple to take the
full sale price from the developer's account, keeping the 30% commission. So
for each return of a $300 app, the developer could take a $90 loss! I don't
know if Apple actually takes advantage of this clause.

~~~
cubicle67
> For example, on a return, the app store agreement allows Apple to take the
> full sale price from the developer's account, keeping the 30% commission. So
> for each return of a $300 app, the developer could take a $90 loss!

This is incorrect. I know it came up a few months ago and caused a lot of
fuss, but it's still incorrect. What is correct is that Apple may take the
full amount they paid the developer. for example, if a customer requested a
refund for a $300 app, this would cost the developer $210 and Apple $90.

~~~
wrs
OK, can you explain how I'm misinterpreting this?

6.3 In the event that Apple receives any notice or claim from any end-user
that: (i) the end-user wishes to cancel its license to any of the Licensed
Applications within ninety (90) days of the date of download of that Licensed
Application by that end-user; or (ii) a Licensed Application fails to conform
to Your specifications or Your product warranty or the requirements of any
applicable law, Apple may refund to the end-user the full amount of the price
paid by the end-user for that Licensed Application. In the event that Apple
refunds any such price to an end-user, _You shall reimburse, or grant Apple a
credit for, an amount equal to the price for that Licensed Application. Apple
will have the right to retain its commission on the sale of that Licensed
Application, notwithstanding the refund of the price to the end-user._

(emphasis mine)

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Qz
The main issue here is not that Apple can and will do this kind of thing, it's
the whole cloud of secrecy that shrouds how they decide this type of thing.

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protomyth
These two variable problems are such a pain. I would bet it was more for the
experiment in pricing than the rant.

~~~
gabrielroth
Agreed. The price-raising is an interesting experiment but you can see why
Apple might object to their store being used for an experiment.

It would be nice if they'd also (a) tell the guy why they kicked him off, and
(b) set a new policy on pricing that prevents stuff like this. Even better
would be (c) allowing him to reapply on the condition that he keep to the new
pricing policy.

~~~
cookiecaper
A policy that says "you can't experiment with your price"? That doesn't sound
well-informed.

The guy wasn't doing anything wrong, he was just trying to maximize the income
potential. If you don't allow vendors to experiment with prices, you're not a
very good distribution channel.

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mkramlich
I suspect the whole thing, on the dev's part, was a PR ploy. Everything about
it seems juvenile too.

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joeld42
Kind of undercuts his argument "look I can put crap in the appstore and sell
it $300" when it gets pulled.

~~~
johnfn
I think his argument was more along the lines of "people will buy overpriced
crap" than "apple won't pull overpriced crap from the store".

