Only tangential, but I really hate the "free to download, IAP to unlock" model. Why? Because IAPs don't "share" on family plans, so if I buy it, I need to buy it again for each of my kids. No thanks.
Hardly anyone discovers apps outside the 'featured' and 'top paid' or 'top free' lists on the app store, so any loss in downloads drops you down those top lists, which can cost you a serious loss in potential revenue and is thus unacceptable.
Also if you have a free and paid version you're forcing the user to download your game all over again just to purchase it, which adds friction to the purchase, which anyone in sales knows even a single extra click lowers the odds of people buying something by a lot.
So the only thing that makes sense for most apps is to make your app free and allow people to spend money in the app to either unlock or acquire something in the game.
There are some apps that are better served on the paid tiers, but those are usually apps that have enough visibility (or built-in audience, i.e. Cartoon Network games) and possibly a high enough price on other platforms that people would expect to pay something anyway (i.e. Minecraft Pocket, Square Enix games), or serve a niche audience of people that don't mind paying (i.e. app versions of board games whose prices are set at fraction of the price of buying the physical board game).
Indeed. I don't think Apple gets enough blame for how they've (mis)managed the app store - especially in terms of available pricing models. The current approach encourages lots of "free" apps and games loaded with IAP and micro-transactions.
If it occurs more often, and is common, then I can see the problem.