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[Cogsys]

Could I ask for people's advice on sales sites for our iOS game?

Background: A lot of iOS games rely on sale sites (which have a large user-base looking for sales) to earn back their development costs. Would you consider the below to be a reasonable sale for those sites?

• Free version:  We will normally make the app free, and players can upgrade to the full version with a $2 in-app purchase.
• Sale price: To get the game onto sale sites, we'll lower the price from $2 to $1, but the free version is no longer available.

Concern: The question was raised whether this counts as an actual sale, because although the price is reduced by 50%, both versions are bundled together, and the free version isn't available during the sale.

Would you consider this an acceptable sale, or might it be seen by some as a trick or breach of ethics?

[bateleur]

For me it depends a bit on the differences between the free version and the full version.

If they're both basically the same game but the "full" version has a few extras then it's maybe a bit shady, but if the free version is substantially reduced then I don't see a problem so long as you don't misrepresent what's on sale.

[Alistair Aitcheson]

Unless I'm reading this wrong I don't see anything unethical here. Could I ask why you would remove the free version of the game from the App Store?

I would say free with unlockable full version is probably the best way to go. From my own experience with Greedy Bankers vs The World, I've done sales reducing it from $2.99 to $0.99, and what I've seen is a boost in sales on the first day (e.g. from 3-5 sales to 60), followed by a quick dip back to normal sales by day 3. I've also noticed each successive sale has become less effective, so I don't think it's a sustainable strategy.

With the free-with-IAP model you're probably going to draw a lot more new users due to the barrier of having to pay being gone, and it being easier to try out. Making the offering of the full game tantalising, and retaining users from the demo, is going to be a challenge, but I think it's much easier to achieve an income this way!