You really want the government getting involved here? I mean, what's next? Attacking SaaS and PaaS for their "free" tiers that really don't provide you with much and you have to actually pay to actually get some real use out of it?
Take some responsibility and stop asking the government to be your nanny.
This is clearly a difference between the US and the EU. Most EU citizens (including me) think it is fine to regulate the market, e.g. if it is misleading.
Such games are often misleading, since they are not really free. The 'Free' label is just used because people will impulse-install a free application more quickly than a paid application and in the end an addicted gamer will probably spend more through in-app purchases.
I think there is a good middle ground that can be found. Instead of listing in-app purchases separately, Apple, Google, et al. could make three options:
- <Price>
- Free
- Free with in app-purchases
It would also be nice if every app store listed all the in-app purchases. Then I, as a customer, can consider beforehand whether I found the prices to be acceptable.
Apple already does this. I am literally looking at a game right now in the App Store and it's free and Apple makes it very clear that it offers IAPs. It even gives you a list of the Top IAPs. So, listing every IAP, it does not do. But beyond that, it gives you exactly what is being asked.
Sorry, but it tells you the cost, right on the damn screen. It's not hidden. It literally tells you the price. This is well after you've already downloaded the free app. So you have the game. You are inside, and their are prices next to it.
I mean, damn. Do these same people go to a club, get in for free, and then wonder why they still have to pay for drinks?
> Say "Free game of the week with paid IAP still included", I don't have a problem with this.
I guarantee that using that wording, people would think that the paid IAP was included with the "Free game of the week." I mean, they are already dumb enough to see a price and ignore it.
If it's "unlock extra maps for $5" I think that's fair.
If it's "125 tokens for $10", that's not really telling you the price. Video arcades used this abstraction tactic successfully. Make people convert money upfront, make the exchange rate difficult to calculate mentally, ensure that the user is left with worthless "change" so they top up again, to avoid being left with sunk costs.
If every time an IAP is offered it showed prices in real $/€, people would think twice.
Notably, for the Play store, it says "FREE" in green letters on grey in the search results, and then you need to click through to see "offers in-app purchases" in dark grey on light grey set well apart from the big, green "Install" button on the details screen, with no information about the in-app purchases.
For my part, I've stopped installing stuff that "offers" this because of the lack of details, but it's extremely annoying to end up clicking through dozens of games to find ones without in-app purchasing because it's not called out in the search results... They've clearly done the bare minimum, in order to avoid losing installs over it. If they cared about their users, they'd have made it far more obvious.
App stores should provide a graph showing expenditure marking the [expected] average and SD per fixed time division (month say), that would be one of the least deceptive and least customer hostile ways to present IAP apps.
Examples:
* Game costs average $1 per month, SD 20¢; OK cool.
* Game is "free" costs average of $20 per month, SD $5.
* Game is free. Average $0 per month.
* Game is 99¢ fixed. Average $0 additional per month.
Even better they could give a playing time [weighted average] too. Then you could compare:
* Game is "free" costs average of $20 per month, SD $5; $1 per hour of play.
* Game costs average $1 per month, SD 20¢; $2 per hour of play.
Seems about as likely as getting the supermarkets to clearly display the cost per kg of all food items.
WTF? Those SaaS/PaaS usually make clear what the plan cover and don't cover.
If companies are intentionally gaming the system to mislead people with intent to profit from us, yes, I do want the government to get involved because nobody else will fix it. Apple's the curator and they're doing it, the app developers are doing it, so who do we have left to complain to?
It's the government's responsibility to make sure companies follow the laws and not take advantage of people.
I do not have a problem with IAP, I'm okay with companies trying to make money via that method.
However, I do have a problem with companies saying those are free games where they aren't free and have paid requirements to keep playing the game.
> WTF? Those SaaS/PaaS usually make clear what the plan cover and don't cover.
WTF? Those free games don't cost you a thing, too! And damn, if you don't want to pay, you don't have to. Apple tells you straight out if a game, free or otherwise, has IAP. They provide you with prices.
What more do you want?
> I do have a problem with companies saying those are free games where they aren't free and have paid requirements to keep playing the game.
So... your problem is that you don't enjoy some free games? You think if a game isn't good enough, it shouldn't be free? That's harsh.
Of all the first world problems to have, this really takes the cake.
You keep saying that the price is listed. But IAPs are hidden behind an extra click. This might seem trivial to you but it is the kind of thing that the EU regulates and most citizens are pleased they do so.
Take another example. In the UK if you're a business marketing to the public and you advertise goods you must include the VAT in the advertised price. The end user almost always has to pay the VAT so it's nonsensical to advertise a product to the public without it.
Today Apple has a featured game which they call free. You click it to get to the game page and it is listed at free+. You scroll down and click IAPs and see that they offer an IAP for £34.99 - that's $58
Apple scoops up a lot of the IAP money and so it is in their interest to push games with IAPs, and it is dishonest of them to push games as free if those games are not truly free.
It is this dishonest advertising model that has driven app prices to such a low point. Someone honestly advertising a game at £5 is going to struggle to make any money.
Hidden behind an extra click? Okay I'll bite. I'm on my phone, but that's fair as most people would be as wee I imagine.
Let's see. Game section, and the top free game I see is Disco Zoo. It's advertised as free. It's described as best new game.
Tap.
Okay, let's see, still free. Swipey Swipey swipe. Pretty pictures, Game Center, and oh look! IAP. But yres, I need to tsp to see those prices.
I wonder..,
So yeah, it's battleship meets zoos. You earn gold in game and use that to fund your battle shipping excursions. I guess if I'm impatient I can just buy more gold. Yep.
Yes yes, I see your point! The game is clearly not free! I have to buy that gold instead of playing the game.
Thank god the EU is there to tackle the horrors of Disco Zoo.
Seriously, the only dishonesty here are the people claims of suffering from this.
You might want to switch to decaff. You're being a bit of a dick.
In the EU the price you see is the price you pay. Weights and measures are standardised so people can compare proces across different stores.
In the US the price you see is less than the price you pay. You add sales tax. That makes it harder to compare prices.
The problem isn't that apps cost money nor that they offer IAPs. The problem is the lack of tranparency with apps. This means that good quality apps with honest procing are penalised by lower quality apps that hide the cost in IAPs but describe themselves as free.
You only need to look at the App Store to see how dysfunctional the current system is.
I realy don't know why you are so aggressively dismissive of something that would allow developers to advertise their software at a sensible real cost and not have to compete with shitty "free" apps that hide the cost in IAPs.
> ..damn, if you don't want to pay, you don't have to. Apple tells you straight out if a game, free or otherwise, has IAP. They provide you with prices.
If they're saying it's the free game of the week, people actually understood it to mean it's actually free. Several of my friends and family members got confused with this and actually thought the IAP was free as well.
> So... your problem is that you don't enjoy some free games? You think if a game isn't good enough, it shouldn't be free? That's harsh.
What does enjoyment have to do with anything? That wasn't the point, the point is the marketing, not the games itself. I don't have a problem with the games, I have a problem with the marketing saying they're free entirely.
You: "What does enjoyment have to do with anything?"
You from a parent comment: "Their free app of the week is often so-called free games but they almost always have in-app purchases that's required to actually enjoy the game."
> Several of my friends and family members got confused with this and actually thought the IAP was free as well.
The same thing is common in other industries. You can't call your food pesticide-free or GM-free or gluten-free unless it really is. Is that a problem for you?
But outside of games just not being playable, people are talking about not having fun without the IAP. This is fairly subjective. I didn't spend a dime on Plant's vs. Zombies 2 despite it having IAP, yet somehow people suggest you "have" to spend money to have fun.
No, the games are free.
> You can't call your food pesticide-free or GM-free or gluten-free unless it really is.
> But outside of games just not being playable, people are talking about not having fun without the IAP. This is fairly subjective. I didn't spend a dime on Plant's vs. Zombies 2 despite it having IAP, yet somehow people suggest you "have" to spend money to have fun.
You didn't clarify that in your original post here. If I understood this is what you meant then I would've edited my post to remove the "fun" part but rather change it with "take full advantage of".
If Plaint and Zombies were advertised as a free game, you download it but it only lets you play 5 minutes before you have to pay, then that's not a free game. It's a free demo/trial.
> Yeah, not even the same thing.
Yes, it is in this point we're making. The people didn't make this happen, it required the intervention of the government to mandate this type of information accuracy.
You are the one here acting like a troll. You come off as argumentative to the point of combative. You nitpick and swear, all in a highly unpleasant tone. If you really are done, great, the discussion will be better off.
"But outside of games just not being playable, people are talking about not having fun without the IAP. This is fairly subjective."
Given that almost all of us arguing from either side would probably agree with this, there are two obvious options:
1. Allow the current situation, in which you can market anything as free, literally an app that does nothing without spending on IAP, so long as it is free to download
2. Prevent the use of the term 'free' if IAP is present at all.
In the interests of the consumer, to offer protection from unscrupulous companies which, particularly in this marketplace, have demonstrated some pretty unethical practises, I favour the latter.
>> You can't call your food pesticide-free or GM-free or gluten-free unless it really is.
> Yeah, not even the same thing.
Not the exact same thing, but not that different either. If I spray my fruits with pesticides that then get washed off in the rain, or stay in the crust which I remove before selling, I could reasonably argue that they are "pesticide-free". It's the government that forbids me to market them that way.
That's not a helpful response. If you want to disagree - why is this different?
It makes sense to me for 'free' to mean 'free forever'. You could call it 'free to download' or whatever. Its basically false or misleading advertising to call something 'free' which you could end up paying for...
All of us, individually, are just single people. We don't have a lot of money. We don't have a lot of clout.
Apple is very big. It has a lot of people, and a lot of money, and a lot of clout.
Government is the countervailing force that, collectively, weak citizens can use to push back against private power. The word isn't "nanny", it's "guardian". It's "advocate".
There's a lot of mental gymnastics going on in your comment. Both Apple and government are simply a bunch of individuals. The difference is which group contains individuals that will use violence against people to get its way regardless of the people's consent.
And like I implied in my last comment, a lot more of what Apple does relies on the consent of its stakeholders than what governments do.
There's a tragic irony in the fact that government routinely uses supposed consent to justify violence, while Apple (as far as I know, although shady stuff might happen from time to time) actually obtains consent from its stakeholders.
Apple doesn't have to go around telling everyone "It's okay that we take your money in exchange for our products, because you actively consent to the exchange," because everyone knows that's how it works. And yet government, which plainly doesn't work that way, is the one that hammers into our heads the lie that the exchange is consensual. It would be laughable, except that so many people actually get fooled.
The nation I'm a citizen of has a government that renews the consent of the government on a regular basis with free, fair, universal elections. I'm sorry if you don't live in such a country. The guillotine is a traditional remedy for that.
Apple doesn't have to do that because we don't rely on it to safeguard our life, liberty, and property. If it disappeared tomorrow the economy would take a hit but life would go on.
You are not free to leave the country, unless you are willing to spend your time in between borders. Many people are not as privileged as you are, for example I need a visa to go anywhere in the world.
And the elections may seem like freedom, but usually you have to choose between multiple sides of the same evil :P
</rant>
You are usually free to leave your country (the GDR likely being one of the few exceptions…), but other societies obviously have the right to reject you entry into their countries. And if you don’t like the choices you have at your elections, nominate yourself.
Ah, yes, the old Don't want to be nannied from cradle to grave? Well, here's your ticket to Somalia! routine. One of my all-time favorite thought-stopping arguments.
> The nation I'm a citizen of has a government that renews the consent of the government on a regular basis with free, fair, universal elections.
At best, that just renews the consent of those who do consent. If I didn't vote, or voted for the losing candidate or option, then I am still governed despite not consenting.
"Consent of the governed" refers to consent of the polity (by some form of majoritarian process), not to individual consent. Individuals do not have the unrestricted option to remove themselves from society; universal consent is unnecessary, unworkable, and undesirable.
> "Consent of the governed" refers to consent of the polity (by some form of majoritarian process), not to individual consent.
That's precisely my point. It's a linguistic trick to make it sound like an exchange is justified despite there not actually being consent. The analogy would be Apple forcefully taking x hundred dollars from you, giving you an iPhone, then saying the exchange is justified because 50.1% of the smartphone market consensually buys iPhones. (I made up that number, obviously.)
The people have the right to vote in whatever government they want. If that right is abridged or taken away, they can kill the people doing that until the right is restored.
Just to be clear, you want the government to protect you from games that are really, 100% free, but provide IAP for additional things that might enhance your enjoyment of the free game.
You said "[j]ust to be clear, you want the government to protect you". I clarified your misconception. The hostile attitude is unwarranted.
Alternatively: Me leave? After you, pal.
As to your second point: The product being sold in question is the in-app purchase, not the original app. The app, however, could be part of a deceptive marketing practice.
Not being a citizen of a EU member state nor an expert in its legal system, I am content to leave this decision up to its regulatory apparatus. If the citizens of any EU member country are dissatisfied, they can elect governments that will leave the union, or elect Members of European Parliament that will change the rules.
If you have no power, no personal agency, and are a perpetual victim, then, really, the state is your best friend in divorcing yourself wholesale of personal accountability.
Ban allowing people to give free samples. They only make people believe that they can get more of what they want for free. Who are they to arbitrarily define how much a "sample" is when they use the word free? It's all or nothing, folks, stop trying to con the rest of us!
Ban allowing people to do charity work. If people don't want to become my personal slave, then they shouldn't have offered to open the door for me. Super simple stuff.
Imagine the beauty of it! Before making an in-app purchase, you'd get to fill out as much paper work as you do for a mortgage. Disclosures, acknowledgement.
We could make Candy Crush as exciting as opening a bank account!
Take some responsibility and stop asking the government to be your nanny.