Years and years ago when we first launched a video chat room app, they denied it. They said it wasnt allowed to have a listing of rooms. So we simply had the app request a file from our server on app launch. If the file was present, we hid rooms. Once we got approved we just removed the file. We kept that up for a few months but it seemed like after the initial approval apple never bothered to check again so we just abandoned it after that.
Be careful, I once got this from Apple (they had misunderstood something about my app)
"Deliberate disregard of the App Store Review Guidelines and attempts to deceive users or undermine the review process is a direct violation of section 3.2(f) of the Apple Developer Program License Agreement. Continuing to violate the Terms & Conditions of the Apple Developer Program will result in the termination of your account, as well as any related or linked accounts, and the removal of all your associated apps from the App Store."
It frustrating. I tried to get a legit app through the app store that had a link to our website where people could sign up. The iOS app is for customers with accounts, so it made sense to us to have a link where users could see our website (discover our Saas product and sign up). Apple repeatedly rejected it since they wanted their 30% cut of our revenue. So we now have to make it clear in our description that this app if for current customers only.
I was rejected for linking to a THIRD PARTY service that happened to have a paid plan too. Didn't get any revenue from that and couldn't very well offer IAPs even if I wanted to... after being in the store for a year, too. The reviewers are grossly incompetent more often than not.
They used to do that, and that is ok. But you can't link them to an external site to pay and sign up.
But now they just bit the bullet and give up a portion of their revenue to Apple and Google. Although I believe 30% is only for the first year. It goes down after that.
The weird thing is why would Apple get any of the revenue. I don't think microsoft gets any from people that watch netflix in their browser, nor google if people watch it in chrome.
In theory either could interfere with your interaction with netflix and demand money to allow it through. Google could start a whitelist of good sites and demand revenue sharing to be allowed on the list but people would go ballistic and firefox would have a lot more users.
I really don't see how apples arrangement is any more acceptable.
You can get new users through your app, you just have to provide a free version. Then if they want to use the premium features, they can log in on the web and pay. But you can't link them to the site or to an external payment method.
It's completely ridiculous. There's one way to distribute software on the second-largest mobile platform in the world, so we either have to pay whatever cut they shake us down for, or provide a terrible user experience by not even letting users click on a link to using our own subscription backend.
I get the feeling it's very top heavy, with the vast majority coming from in-app purchases of games. Presumably these are the ones advertised relentlessly too.
I was wondering the same thing.. Maybe the developer was able to remotely flip a switch after the app went through approval to change its behavior and app review didn't catch it? What's really surprising is how long it's been out (almost 2 months)
I can see that by using Microsoft CodePush or similar. But you can't change the description, in app purchases or title without going through the approval process again.
Yep. I do wonder if they employed some sort of shady tactic like this or my suggestion to get past app review. What surprising is they were still in the app store after 2 months. Apple usually pulls things pretty quick.