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[Grhyll]

Hi!

Needing some light from people having some experience on mobile stores
I'll soon launch my first game on iOS and Android, and I am planning to have two version:
- Paid version with no iAP, no ad (probably $1.99)
- Free version with some ads (optional ones to double coins and occasionally a mandatory one if player never chooses to watch any), and a unique iAP removing ads and permanently doubling coins (bringing them to the level of the paid version)

I'm pretty sure to publish the two versions on iOS, the free one to generate downloads, and the paid one because some players just prefer to pay upfront and then enjoy their game, but I'm still hesitating for Android. From what I know, Android players are far less inclined to pay for their game, and a paid game can very easily be pirated and downloaded for free, whereas I doubt they would make the effort of breaking it if there's only a free version.

Any advice on this situation? My goal isn't to become rich, so it's not such a big deal if the game gets pirated, but still I'd like to create the most favourable conditions for my game. Paid + free, or only free on Android?

[Columbo]

We have paid+free on iOS and free-only on Android.

FWIW, our iOS free revenue (combining ads and IAPs) is about 5x our iOS paid revenue*. We never tried doing a paid version on Android, but I have also heard that paid apps on Android are a very tough sell, and given the luke-warm iOS sales, I don't plan on doing it. One of my main concerns is that due to market fragmentation, it's so hard to be confident that you'll be selling something that works on your customers device.

* Actually our original iOS release was paid (with some very optional IAPs), then we switched the app to free about 8 months later, then we added a paid version (with no IAPs) a few months after that. Our ongoing iOS free revenue is much better than our iOS paid revenue, but we did have a best-new-games feature when we originally released as a paid app which probably earned more than all the revenue we've had since.

We have a couple of post-mortems with figures on our website, but I don't think we've done one that covers the period where we've had a free and paid app in the store at the same time.

[Grhyll]

Thanks a lot for that insight! I was more inclined lately to only go with the free version on Android, you may have definitely convinced me. I'll go check your postmortem, now I'm curious

Edit: very interesting post-mortem indeed, that was a good read and I'll also give a look at your game!

[magius96]

I have several apps on Google and Amazon, all of which are free and ad-supported.  There is one very strong reason why I don't sell any apps or IAP on android.

Google does not handle all the taxes for you.  You are expected, as a developer, to know what the tax rates for each country/region are and to file any appropriate tax forms yourself.  Now, it's true that the number of countries and regions this applies to is rather small and getting smaller, its still an issue that I don't want to deal with.

[Grhyll]

Whaat '_' I never heard about that, and it's the kind of things that really scare me (I hate paperwork). At the same time, I would feel bad not to provide an option for the player to completely remove the ads if he likes the game... I'm gonna have to dig a bit around that matter, thanks for warning me about this.

[magius96]

Not a problem.  I don't use IAP or sell any of my games on Android for this reason.  However, I do keep my ads non-intrusive in that I design my game screens around the ad placement so that the ad is never in the way of the game itself.  If you were to remove the ad from my games, it would leave a blank, unused space where the ad was.  The intent is that once a game has earned a certain quota, or has been out for a certain amount of time, I'll go back and remove the ads to make them completely free.

[Grhyll]

That's a nice way of doing things.
I'll post my findings here once I know more about all this, I'm using Unity's in app purchasing api, and it is advertised as "allowing devs not to worry about any paperwork whatsoever", so I'll go ask them for more details about this tax issue. Apparently it is handled differently depending on the country in which you are selling the iap, so maybe I could just remove it for some countries and keep it simple in the others!

[magius96]

I use Unity myself, though I haven't used their IAP API. (Wow...the acronyms...)  I imagine though that they are handling the purchasing point instead of google.  If that's the case then they probably are handling it for you.  What I mentioned about the tax issue is mostly for paid games that don't use IAP...meaning you buy it from the Google app store instead of downloading it free then buying it via IAP.

I hadn't thought about using a different service for IAP..that may be a good route to go to avoid those types of issues.  Let me know what you find out about the Unity IAP, cause if they handle taxes for you then I'll definitely start using that.  Makes things easier anyways you know, release the game free with IAP to unlock the full game, instead of releasing a separate demo.