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Comment by bilbo0s | Hacker News Reader

This is a really good idea!

Although, I suspect, app developers would absolutely hate it.

Because it would be a disaster. There are so many games that you can complete in a day or two. They may be absolutely FANTASTIC, like Monument Valley. But people already don’t like paying for apps so they’ll ask for their $.99 back after they’ve played the game.

The end result is the only games they can survive or 90 our games that are full of in app purchases. Every other app could be easily download it, used, and refunded it quickly.

As bad as monetization is in the App Store right now it would be in order of magnitude worse.

Build in a trial period then with limited functionality/levels. The cost of that trail period is a small percentage of the overall price. For isntance, let's say the game is $12 USD. The trial period of the game would be 2 days 1 or 2 levels & cost $2 USD. you can upgrade to the full game (no refunds) or pay as you go for each level/functionality.

Yes - maybe this is more programming, but we have better languages & libraries to make this happen.

I think there's a way to do this & eliminate nonsense.

$12 games are an absolute no-go on the App Store. If the app is paid its almost certainly $0.99, maybe $2.

So that doesn’t work, unless the ‘trial period’ is $0.20. And at that point Apple/etc is losing money on CC fees.

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