With the inception of ‘freemium’ business model, many apps now-a-days are free to install and use but once peeped inside there are a bunch of in-app purchases for the app. These are mostly upgrades and add-ons to the originally free app. For many apps this is very apt and useful as you just need some basic feature and for anything else you need to pay. But many developers are notorious and have been bundling their free apps to in-app purchases which could stockpile to more than $1000.
This has been the state of Free games on the App Store from quite a while now, these games are very addictive, successful and kids love them too. This makes parents very furious when they see a big fat bill full of in-app purchases which they assumed and innocently installed a a Free App. This has caused many lawsuits on Apple and Apple had refunded a lot of customers who won their case as they claim to be tricked by developers and innocent kids just kept buying power-ups to clear a certain level in a free game.
In this light, the European regulators have ordered Apple to stop using the word ‘Free’ for apps even if they free to download and install, this will not only warn people about possible in-app purchases but also bring back the meaning of the word ‘Free’ which is now a days being traded for ‘Freemium’ in the new marketing model for many companies. Just to be clear, ‘Freemium’ model is great as long as its not being exploited to suck money from the user, if used ethically and well a freemium model is a win-win to the developer as well as the user.
This change is not just for iOS in App Store but also will be seen in the Mac App Store.
Source : Techcrunch
