The news that Apple had enabled app and game gifting kicked up a bit of a stink, with some developers worried this meant better off companies would be able to gift their way to App Store prominence.
Thankfully however, the experience of one of the first developers to try out the mechanic - Imangi Studios, which gave away 1,000 copies of its Harbor Master game over the weekend - is that it's a hassle to do and gifts don't count towards App Store ranking.
"Our opinion is that every entrepreneur needs to know how the market works. Gifting was a brand new technique, nobody had tried it, and we had a new game to promote," wrote Natalia Luckyanova on the company's blog.
"Our hunch was that gifting was not going to affect rank. But even so, it would be an exciting way to launch Harbor Master HD. We had spent lots of money in the past experimenting with different forms of advertising, and we saw this promotion as no different."
Better to give
So although she collected 1,000 email addresses of people with access to a US iTunes account (gifting is geographically limited) within ten hours, it took her two days to send out the gifts as you're limited to 1,000 characters in the gifting address field.
In addition, iTunes locked after every couple of batches, while Visa shut down her credit card twice; both due to anti-fraud measures.
Still overall, Luckyanova was happy with the experiment.
"We got over 1,000 interested mailing list subscribers, great media attention for Harbor Master HD, and a lot of good will from the community," she said.
[source: Imangi blog]
News
Contributing Editor
A Pocket Gamer co-founder, Jon is Contributing Editor at PG.biz which means he acts like a slightly confused uncle who's forgotten where he's left his glasses. As well as letters and cameras, he likes imaginary numbers and legumes.
Top Stories
as
News
12 hours, 50 minutes ago
Supercell's Hay Day returns to China's App Store after four year absence
Feature
May 17th, 2024
New release roundup: The best new mobile games from a battle royale to a console classic remake
Feature
May 16th, 2024
Behind the scenes: How adding sandwich offers to an idle merge game boosted three metrics at once
Events
Valencia Indie Summit 2024 | Europe | May 16th |
Digital Dragons | Europe | May 19th |
GamesBeat Summit 2024 | North America | May 20th |
Mobidictum Meetup Tallinn May 2024 | Europe | May 21st |
Nordic Game Spring 2024 | Nordic | May 21st |
Impact 2024 - Indie Games | May 23rd | |
MomoCon 2024 | North America | May 24th |
Morocco Gaming Expo | Africa | May 24th |
Popular Stories
Feature
May 14th, 2024
53 top mobile games in soft launch: Squad Busters, Battle Guys: Royale, Plants vs. Zombies 3, LEGO Hill Climb Adventures, and more
Feature
May 13th, 2024
Hot Five: Dubai's new Gaming Visa, April's mobile game charts, and Xbox studio closures
News
May 10th, 2024