I am implementing an App with in app purchase of type:non-renewing subscriptions.
according to apple documents:
If your app uses non-renewing subscriptions, your app is responsible for the restoration process.
FROM HERE
My question is, if the restoring is mandatory by apple, how to prevent thousands of users sharing one apple account with only one description?
For example, if in my app, you pay $0.99 that can use this app for 10 days, from apple's requirements, the user must be able to use app within 10 days on any his/her devices, with simply enter the credentials. However, if the user set a simple account credentials and share it with 100 people, then, the 100 people don't have to buy the subscription anymore and can use the app free during the 10 days.
Some people keep assert that people won't share their account... how do you know that? i saw people register some apple id exclusive for sharing apps and games, and only need to pay once.
Besides, i don't implement my own server and my App don't need one. Is there a way to prevent this?
Thanks in advance
Since non-renewing subscriptions seem to require the app (developer) to use a separate (non-Apple) server to deal with the restore process (for example, see How to support multiple devices with non-renewing In-App Purchase?), why not have that server keep track of the number of restores per "user"? Then you could impose a maximum number of restores per "user". Each installed app that has made a purchase could have its own unique_token (for example, see app rejected.how to track user non-renewing subscription). The user would then have to have a username/password, which would be associated with the unique_token, in order to do a restore (for example, see Restore transactions for Non-renewing subscriptions without registration; and see Registration should be always optional on non-renewing subscription?).
Related
I have used consumable virtual currency purchases in my game.
The user can use that currency to unlock different types of jetpacks.
Apple rejected the game saying it requires a restore purchase button.
But apple's documentation says that consumable products does not require restore.
Why is apple considering the unlocked jetpacks as non-consumable products?
Following is the message that i have received in iTunes connect.
From Apple
10.6 - Apple and our customers place a high value on simple, refined, creative, well thought through interfaces. They take more work but are
worth it. Apple sets a high bar. If your user interface is complex or
less than very good, it may be rejected
10.6 Details Your app uses intermediary currency to purchase items that function as non-consumable products but does not include a
restore mechanism. Users restore transactions to maintain access to
content that they’ve already purchased. Next Steps Please modify
your app to include an optional user registration feature that allows
users to restore their purchases to all of their iOS devices. We
recommend indicating that account registration is necessary to restore
previously purchased In-App Purchase products, and providing a way for
users to register later if they wish to access this content in the
future.
Should i make a restore mechanism for the jetpacks ?
I am using Soomla and unity3d for iap.
In summary, what Apple are saying is that you must include some kind of user registration / account feature where you are storing the users items on your server.
When they sign in on a new device, they should still have everything they have bought in your game.
It seems that Apple considers these purchases as non-consumable products because they are non-consumable products, no matter how you try to handle them in your app. If you define them as consumables, that means a customer loses them when they uninstall and reinstall the app, buy a new phone and restore their old phone to the new one, use the app on several phones, and so on. In other words, Apple considers your use of a consumable purchase to be cheating.
Your customers would feel exactly the same. If your marketing people try to maximise the flow of money from customers to your company, they should consider methods that Apple and your customers don't consider to be cheating.
I intend my app to gain access to my server after the in-app purchase is complete. This access requires real work, and data & traffic ($$).
A typical client might own anywhere up to a couple of hundred devices (and I assume on one account, for their simplicity).
Thus I only get the one payment across many, many devices interacting with the server.
I'm not trying to be stingy - but can I prevent multiple devices sharing the same purchase (in my case server access)?
Or do I implement another method for selling access?
You'll have to implement another method. Apple's guide explicitly states that:
Users can restore products that they previously purchased—for example, to bring content they’ve already paid for onto their new phone.
If the same iTunes account is associated with more than one device then Apple requires any purchases to be available on all those devices.
#Tommy is correct - regarding non-consumable IAPs. However, you could implement a non-recurring subscription in-app purchase instead and give each device a unique identifier. When the user attempts to access the server, you could see if that identifier is in your database (if the user has purchased the IAP), and determine whether or not they need to purchase a subscription. Even though you may not want a subscription-based service, you could probably make a membership for a very long period of time like 10 years (it's not required to be selected in iTunes Connect) and handle it that way. Only issue is that you need to figure out a way to give each device a unique ID that won't change.
Further to the #Tommy answer, in the February 3, 2014 version of Apple's Getting Started with In-App Purchase on iOS and OS X it says:
There are a handful of important guidelines to keep in mind as you design your application:
- You must make your In-App Purchase items available to all of the devices registered to a user
and
Users view the items they purchase as theirs to keep and permanent. Therefore be sure
purchased items are available in all instances of your app running on all the devices the user
owns, even after your app is deleted from a device, reinstalled, or downloaded to a new device.
and
For Non-Renewing Subscriptions, [blah, blah, blah]..
Additionally, your application must include a mechanism to deliver the purchased Non-
Renewing Subscription In App Purchase to all iOS devices owned by a single user.
Looks like there is no way to restrict items to a single device :(
My app got rejected because of restore button on non-renewing in app purchase. Do i have to remove restore button ? If i have to do so then how user will restore his purchases.Please help.
Non-renewing subscriptions are consumable. Therefore they cannot be restored. A restore button therefore makes no sense. You also need some kind of authentication/login system for the user. (See below for detailed explanations.)
Sources:
consumable vs. non-consumable in app purchases
non-renewing subscriptions
Update from WWDC2017: In Session #303 App Store Engineer Pete Hare explains at 3:00 that a non-renewing-subscription can be seen as "a consumable product with an expiry date on it"
There has been some debates in the comments wether non-renewing subscriptions are consumable or not, so I want to say something about it. "Consumable" means that you can consume them multiple times. Like "30 minutes of talking" in a voice-over-IP telephony application. On the other hand, there are non-consumables that you can buy only once. Like when you unlock all levels in a game app. You buy it once, and when you reset the device and redownload the app, you should be able to restore the purchase, so that you don't have to pay twice to unlock all levels. Furthermore, if you don't tap the restore-button in this case but just buy the "unlock all levels" package again, it works, but you will not be charged by apple a second time. That's why it is called non-consumable. It's some kind of metapher. An apple is "consumable". Once it is consumed, it is gone. A chair is non-consumable. You have it as long as you don't destroy it or give it away.
So, it makes sense to regard a non-renewing subscription as non-consumable. If you buy it a second time, you shouldn't pay twice, you should just use the old subscription you already have. If you reset the device, you should be able to restore the subscription once you re-download the app. The restoration is just not done by Apple but by the app itself.
I still regard non-renewing subscriptions as consumable though. I use a simple definition of consumable vs. non-consumable: An in-app-purchase is consumable, when, from the point of view of the StoreKit API, it can be purchased multiple times in the same week by the same user. All consumable IAP-items cannot be restored through the StoreKit. All non-consumable IAP-items can be restored through the StoreKit.
So, the developer is himself responsible for restoring the in-app-purchase of a non-renewing subscription, right? No, sorry. How would the app restore the in-app-purchase of a non-renewing subscription? Suppose I have an iPod and I subscribe to 1 month of listening to the Foo-radio. Now I want to also listen to the Foo-Radio on my iPad. Soo, I install the Foo-App on my iPad and tap the "restore" button. Well... what is the "restore" button supposed to do? How can it know if I already have purchased a "Foo"-subscription or not, and how long it will still be valid? Answer: it can not. This approach does not work.
In order for a non-renewing subscription to work, you have to login the user first, to tie the subscription to some online account. Username/Password, Open-ID, Login via Gmail, Facebook, etc. all would work. Then, when the user purchases an n-r subscription you have to store the fact that he subscribed on some server and link it to his account on the server. You also have to prevent the user from buying the n-r subscription when he is not already logged in. Let's continue with my iPod/iPad-example above. I download the app on my iPad, I login with Facebook, and voila, I can use the "Foo"-subscription now. There is no need for a "restore" button, because the app should check at login-time which subscriptions the user has.
There will be some additional problems to deal with. (1) For example, nothing prevents the user from logging in into 200 devices. Here the problem is not a user with 200 devices, but a university with 1000 students where 180 students share the same account. (2) If the server crashes, some people will probably lose their subscriptions. Problem (1) can potentially lead to decreased income. Problem (2) can lead to angry and unhappy customers.
From Apple: "Non-renewable subscriptions. Subscriptions that don’t involve delivering episodic content. Examples include access to a database of historic photos or a collection of flight maps. It’s your app’s responsibility to make the subscription available on all of the user’s devices and to let users restore the purchase. This product type is often used when your users already have an account on your server that you can use to identify them when restoring content. Expiration and the duration of the subscription are also left to your app (or your server) to implement and enforce." [Italics and bold added] https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/NetworkingInternet/Conceptual/StoreKitGuide/Chapters/Products.html
Apple Reviewer's current-similar response about Non-Renewing Subscriptions "Your app offers Non-Renewing Subscriptions and this purchasability type must have its own restoring function - if you have removed it please re-implement it. Furthermore, your app must also offer a function, such as account creation, such that purchases can be tracked across all of a user's devices. Please implement a login feature as well as a restore mechanism prior to resubmitting your revised binary for review."
We are looking at using consumable (non-renewable) IAP for subscriptions for our app after being rejected for auto-renewable subscriptions. I've read through many posts pertaining to this, but haven't seen any discussion on limiting the number of iOS devices a user can use the consumable on or "restore" to.
The main concept seems to be, let user create an account (optionally) on your server, and allow them to enter account info to restore/share across multiple devices.
My primary question is, how can we limit the number of devices a user is allowed to use the subscription on, and the number of devices a user is allowed to "restore" to, and still meet Apple's requirements for restoring purchases?
If we setup a server, and allow the user to optionally create an account to store the receipt information, how can we keep that user from sharing their login information with anyone if we have no way to uniquely track the number of unique devices that are using the account? (perhaps I'm wrong here, but with the deprecation of UUID and the possibility of identifierForAdvertising changing if the app is deleted and re-installed, there is no way to cache a unique device to determine how many devices have used the subscription, correct?)
I've contemplated storing an auth token in the user's iCloud, but from my understanding, there is no upper limit on how many devices can share an iCloud account.
I'm sure I'm not the first to run into this problem, how is everyone solving this?
Thanks -
Matt
Consumable items are intended to be device-sepcific. And once consumed, the user must purchase it again, even if it were purchased previously on the given device.
Apple doesn't officially want you to limit the number of devices for subscriptions or non-consumables - they want your IAP subscriptions and non-consumables to be available on ALL of a user's devices. See: https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/NetworkingInternet/Conceptual/StoreKitGuide/APIOverview/OverviewoftheStoreKitAPI.html
Why not use iCloud to transfer an IAP non-renewable-subscription between devices? That limits it to just the user's device set. Why do you care if they have 2 devices or 10? I bet that users don't typically share their apple-id's outside of their immediate family.
The app I'm working on was recently rejected by Apple for containing an auto-renewable subscription. They recommended that we switch to non-renewing subscriptions for our content.
The one thing I can't quite wrap my brain round is how to restore a purchased subscription to a shared device. Apple recommends we don't use user login - something we would like to avoid ourselves. I did come across one solution where unique codes were used between the two devices - to validate a purchased subscription, through a server. But I believe that could be easily pirated, as in theory friends or employees within a company could share these unique codes with one another and avoid paying the subscription charge.
I can't really find much on Google about this, and was curious to know if anyone has been able to successfully implement a non-renewing subscription?
To paraphrase the advice we received from Apple when dealing with these issues:
Per the iTunes Connect Developer Guide:
...subscriptions must be provided on all devices associated with a
user. In App Purchase expects subscriptions to be delivered through an
external server that you will provide. You must provide infrastructure
to deliver subscriptions to multiple devices.
Apple consider user registration to be appropriate but won't allow you to make it obligatory. So registration must be optional and the user must be able to register at any time — including to allow them to share a subscription they've already bought between devices.
So it sounds like we may have received slightly different advice. Is it possible that Apple only told you not to require user login in general, separately from the requirement for distributing the subscription to all devices?