Comment by georgeecollins 15 hours ago
How dare they charge for that slot machine!
More seriously: There have always been mobile games that have a purchase price or ask for a single payment. You could find one right now. The vast majority of popular apps have in game transactions. Game developers just want to get paid for the work they do.
Apple made one concession to consumer protection law and the FTC by changing the "free" button to "get", but I'm sure they know how those slot machines work, and where the money comes from.
At one point in-app purchases were listed clearly and prominently so they were easy to inspect (and hopefully embarrassing for nonsense like $99 wheelbarrows of smurfberries[1].) Now it seems like IAP rates are hidden below the fold, unfortunately.
[1] https://www.pipelinecomics.com/smurfberries-apple-app-store-...
I'm not saying the Apple store isn't responsible for the problems of free to play. They really are. Apple has a memory of when their hardware was beholden to software like Adobe or Microsoft and they designed the store to avoid that problem. It really favors cheap apps, and they used to really discourage offering a sample and then unlocking the full app for a purchase. This was supposed to be so you didn't have "bait and switch" but really it just trained people to think no app was worth paying for. Even though they did pay so much for loot boxes..
So now there's an alternative way to pay. Let's be happy about that.
Every so often Apple will themselves feature a selection of popular pay-once-and-get-it-all games in the store as an ad capsule.
... actually, I just checked, and if you scroll down enough in the Games tab on your iPhone's App Store app, they seem to be running it now under "Pay Once & Play". Might be worth a look.
Interestingly, in the Apple App Store, there is no option to filter by "paid". Only free. I want an option to filter by "paid, no IAP". Actually, I don't mind IAp for things like new levels and such. It's just so badly abused by mobile games.