Free copies of an IAP game

Unity Engine
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1

Hi,

Recently we’ve had trouble trying to work out the best way to give away free copies (for review sites, or otherwise) of our game, since its a free game with 70% of its content unlocked through IAP.

Since there’s no such thing as IAP promo codes (which seems like a top priority for Apple, but I digress), I was wondering the best way to go about it.

Here’s some ideas we’ve had, please say if any are viable!:

  • Free app with IAP, alongside a fully paid app - It means maintaining two versions of our app, and people have to start again if they were to purchase the paid after the free.
  • Our own built-in promo code system - Prohibited by Apple I believe.
  • Using the UDID - Bit of a hassle, and I think iOS 5.0 stopped access to the UDID anyway.
  • Adding reviewers to the 100 developers list in iTunes Connect - Incredibly clunky, and we also want to give it away to non-reviewers too!
2

Well a good idea could be to have 1 free game. Another game that is paid but give the user some of the IAP unlocked by default (maybe have 10k gold or whatever), then you can give the guys the promo code to the “paid version”. So I guess #1

3

The IAP would work well here, since its to unlock levels which you would expect to see in a paid version. I’ve also heard a lot of people saying their app got rejected for using the lite/paid model unnecessarily… I’m guessing to push developers onto the IAP model.

4

I have seen built in promo code to unlock IAP features, I don’t think it’s prohibited. Smart move would be to call that “reviewers code” or something similar.

5

Hi dadako,

can you give examples?

thanks

6

It can be done quite easily by using a webserver (php i.e).

But if Apple believe this could be used for selling game content outside of the appstore, it will be rejected.