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by _yb2s 775 days ago
I added the last part later because I was really excited to try this until learning it required so much personal information up front just to see what it is. Generally I’m willing to create an account on a platform I trust, am familiar with, and certain will be useful. For this type of thing, I would not expect it to be necessary, so it feels weird, and makes me suspicious. It’s also just a hassle- usually apps like this have a guest mode so you can initially explore without hassle, and then only create an account when doing so is useful to the user, and they are sure they like the app.

It sort of feels like someone asking for a commitment on the first date…

1 comments

Haha good analogy, thank you for your comment! As said in some of the other comments, I am very surprised to see the push back on the account creation. I do have Guest Mode in the roadmap, but based on everybody's feedback, I will prioritize it much higher. Again thank you for taking your time to comment!
Why do you need them to have an account? What on your roadmap requires it?

And perhaps you could leverage Game Center accounts for "play" data, which leverages Apple's sensitivity to provide privacy while allowing achievements, multiplayer, and turn-based games, between partners.

https://developer.apple.com/game-center/

Good luck, I really do believe your idea is a good one that can help people! HN is full of privacy obsessed tech people so take the feedback with a grain of salt.

However, lowering the barrier to getting to try out you app is going to give you much better user retention. When I download any app and it immediately asks for an account and or a credit card, I usually just uninstall it. I suspect that is true for most people.