I'm about to launch an iOS game, with game centre support. At the end of each month I would like to contact the winner and offer them a prize. Is it possible to do this though the iTunes connect, or some other system?
I can't find much within the Apple developer doc's and the alternatives all seem a bit long winded.
You cannot do that. The Apple guidelines strongly suggest that they want to keep the personal details of the user away from the developers. Also, it is not a good practice to incentivise the winners outside the app!
Plus as Paulw11 put it, the Game Centre leaderboards are usually spammed, and you finding a player with a genuine high score is difficult.
Hope this helps.
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I'm searching through internet, but I haven't found a clear answer.
I'm going to develop a game which, as many games, have score, badges, etc. The question is: can I have my own web page to show this values, with stats, names, leaderboards... or Apple will reject the app if it doesn't use the Apple Game center?
You don’t have to use Game Center. There are plenty of games that use other achievement / leaderboard / etc. platforms—Zynga has their own thing, and OpenFeint was pretty popular for a while.
So I know that there are no promo codes for in-app-purchases in iOS. What I am wondering, is will Apple reject this mechanism:
Provide two in-app purchases, one at full price, say $9.99 and one at discount price say $7.99 (for the same thing)
When you click on the $7.99 one, you are first asked to input a coupon code to be allowed to use the discount price. This discount code would have been found elsewhere - bloggers giving it away, coupon sites, etc.
Thoughts?
I believe your proposed method would work because a) you are not linking to an outside site to purchase the product (i.e., you are still using the App Store iAP method) and b) there are other programs that use similar features (e.g., entering in your OpenFeint username to enable that service).
Good luck!
I really think only Apple can tell but it is a good chance that it is okay.
I sometimes just went ahead and called them and often I was lucky and had a real competent guy on the phone telling me answers to stuff like that right away sometimes I had someone more cautious but pointing me into the right direction within the legal contracts. And whatever they said at the end the very much shielded app approval team (no phone numbers, no e-mail addresses) will decide. The worst that can happen is that you have to resubmit your app without it. Costs you time but no more.
I always used this link for phone numbers I think they still work.
I had same problem... so I called to the apple developer IAP helpdesk and they redirect me to email the App Store Review section.
Next day they wrote me:
We understand that you would like clarification about a business model you are developing for your app.
We are unable to provide pre-approval or guidance on app ideas or concepts. After you have submitted your app, we will provide feedback during the review process, if applicable.
So I wish you luck... There is no one clear option 😔
I'm looking for a workaround to allow many users (100+) to download my paid app via a unique code of some kind.
I'm aware of Apple's limit of 50 per release but this will not be enough. Is there a way to gift an app en masse? What about a third-party solution for promo codes? If you've successfully found a way around this limitation, please let me know.
As you mention, Apple only allows you 50 promo codes per update (NOTE: doing an update allows 50 more codes. If you're ok releasing the codes 50 at a time over several updates, this will work for you.)
One thing that you can do is build unlock codes into your app. You can either hard-code the unlock codes or, for a little extra effort, make the whole thing server based. This blog post talks about one such way to do this.
NOTE: in-app unlock codes will only let you give away content to people who already have your app. If your app is in the store with a price associated, and you want to give it away, this won't help you.
You can also buy copies of your own app and give iTunes gift codes to people. This has the downside of costing you 30% (Apple's cut.) That is, if you pay 99¢ for a gift-code for your app and send it to me, you get back 70¢ for the sale, but Apple gets the other 29¢.
You could change the price of your app to free for a day or two and only tell certain people about the sale dates.
If you're a big company (5000+ employees), you can use the enterprise license, but the tone of your question makes me think this might not apply.
That's about it for choices. As one commenter pointed out, any sort of gaming the iTunes system will likely result in your losing your dev license and is probably not worth it.
Good luck!
I am soon gonna release my first game on Apples AppStore, which is a Tower Defense game. My question is if the preferable choice is to release two version, one lite and one full, or to have one version with in-app purchase to unlock the rest of the game (levels 6-20)?
The first priority is to follow apple's guidelines (I do not want it rejected).
Second priority is financial (which gives the most money)
Lastly, which is easiest to maintain (I believe both methods are almost as easy to maintain if you do it right)
I think that many developers faced this problem, and i believe, that in-app purchase give you lot's of benefits and is really a right way to go.
You don't split up downloads. All the purchases of your app counts to the only one.That puts you higher in the App Store. All the reviews. All the stars. That's what you want.
It's easier for user, who has chosen the free app to switch to the paid one. To press just one button is not the same as delete old one and install new app.
If saving user settings and progress is imortant for your app, you just save it in NSUserDefaults and continue using after upgrade. Imagine, what you'll need to do, if you have two separate apps.
Jailbreakers. They download cracked apps in Installous. Not your's.
You need to maintain only one app.
Of course, you'll need to implement in app purchase in your app, and there is still iAP cracker, but, as for me, choise is obvious.
So I've spent a lot of time making an iPhone game and have recently realized that I don't have to limit myself to just Apple - I know there are app stores for Palm and Android, but does anybody know of a good "app store" for the plain old PC? I would like to have one where individual developers can publish an app and not have to worry about all the billing and piracy issues!
Valve has Steam, although that's a bit of a game store. It comes with DRM so it might be what you want. http://store.steampowered.com/
From what I can see, their website has an email to coontact them about distribution and that's it. steamworks#valvesoftware.com
Stardock has Impulse, which is more of a general app store although it does have games as well. No DRM baked in, and it has a very liberal return policy. http://www.impulsedriven.com/
Impulse has a page with more info and a contact form - https://developer.impulsedriven.com/#publishing
The page states the base rate is 70% which is likely more than Steam gives you.