Can’t sell your iPhone game? Give it away for free for a while, then delete all the levels in an update. Update: According to the reviews on the apple site, some people actually paid $1 for the game, so the update removed levels for paid customers.
The creators of vParticle (Vladimir Vernacki) moved all but one of the levels of their game to the “plus version” due to a lack of sales. The changelog simply read “updated to 2.0”, this sort of action is unprofessional.
Initially, they had just added advertisements for “vParticle plus”, and now they have deleted all the levels from the free version. I am uncomfortable when you “down-update” software to make it less functional. This breaks the traditional model of software ownership and is reminiscent of the kindle erases. (You can backup applications in the iTunes store, but there is no easy way to ignore update notifications, and backing up updates requires a sync)
It’s only a small bit of money out of my pocket if I wish to buy the full application, yet this uncomfortable knowledge is generalizable. I’ve had plenty of applications I’ve paid for updated with advertisements for sequels. The iPhone application store really needs better changelog rules, user feedback venues against developers, and methods to revert changes and ignore updates by developers so that users no longer need to fear clicking the “update all” button.
