[twostraws]

If I only released an up-front payment version, people would complain that they weren't able to try the app first. If I only released a free version with in-app purchases, people would complain that they don't like in-app purchases. I did both, and I'm still getting complaints. I get that my solution is imperfect, but I'm trying my best.

[wffurr]

I really appreciate you having a full unlocked copy of the game with up front pricing and trying to solve this issue in a thoughtful way.

In the old days, the free version would be a limited preview of the game, and would direct users to purchase the full game. We called it a demo or shareware, as in you were intended to share and copy it widely.

You could also have the “in app purchase” be the full game unlock.

[max002]

Member it (southpark) :) one could learn some assembler by taking down those limitations and cd checks. Who would thought that it will be useful in reverse engineering malwqre in future? Hah...

Dont get me wrong, at that time very little ppl in my country had ccs to actually buy any software even if, they wouldnt give it to kids :)

[anonymous908213]

This is a solved problem. It's called a "demo". What it entails is giving a small sample of your product completely for free, with no monetization at all, in order to entice a prospective buyer for more. It may be less lucrative than selling microtransactions to literal children, but it is something that people won't complain about, if you are genuinely in the market for a solution and not just trying to farm money off of scamming kids into swiping their parents' credit card because they have no idea what it's worth.

[twostraws]

You say "solved problem", then suggest something explicitly banned by Apple's app review guidelines.

[cheschire]

Good early lesson of small business and app development is you can’t make everyone happy. Trying to though will be guaranteed to make at least one person unhappy, and that’s you.

So take advice where it’s offered but don’t mistake complaints for advice.

[yojo]

The HN crowd is touchy on some topics. Don’t take it too personally - good on you for building something cool and shipping it.

FWIW my favorite non-predatory pattern is a level-limited free version with a single “unlock full game” IAP. That way users don’t have to lose their progress switching to paid.

[skeeter2020]

This is just an optimized version of shareware, now that we don't need to mail in a cheque to get the full set of floppies. seems self-defeating to reference anything like "in app purchase" for what's jsut a path for an immediate update after the user completes a known subset of levels.

[aeon_ai]

The issue here is that you are trying to bridge two disparate goals - making money and helping kids.

The fact that this isn’t open source, as it stands, means the latter is not a primary goal - which is not an indictment, just an observation.

The complaints will come, regardless, for that reason alone, given the marketing/narrative.

You’re selling a product to parents/educators who want to gamify the technical education of their children. That market, small as it is, despises micro transactions.

[yojo]

A sustainable business has the capacity to help a lot more kids than an unfinished open source project that never gets released on iOS because no one wants to pay the developer fee.

This isn’t “HackVille by Zynga,” it’s an indie dev trying to make a product they believe in. I hope it succeeds and inspires more high quality edutainment.

[dghlsakjg]

What does open sourcing an application have to do with helping kids?

There are plenty of arguments for open sourcing things. “Closed source apps necessarily deprioritize helping children” is not an obvious argument to me. Can you draw the connection more explicitly?